Remnants
by rhhgrt
Summary: The epilogue gave us hints of TeddyVictoire and RoseScorpius. This is a look at the past and present of those relationships through the eyes of Andromeda. Appearances will be made by most major characters. NOW COMPLETE.
1. Remus

_Thanks to DeepDownSlytherin for making me fall in love with Andromeda, and for consequently making me want to write this. So…here it goes._

**Chapter One: Remus**

"What the hell just happened?" Bella hissed at me from across the table. I looked down the Slytherin table; Lucius Malfoy, my fellow prefect, was wearing an expression on his face that was a cross between sympathy and amusement. Narcissa looked as if she was about to vomit.

"The hat put him into Gryffindor," I replied in a matter of fact voice.

"I know he was sorted into Gryffindor I'm not blind Andromeda."

"Well, you did ask…"

I know just how irritating I was being, and I stand by it. I was not about to let a Bellatrix Black temper tantrum ruin the glow of my first night as a prefect. She had obviously, and predictably, taken the result of Sirius' sorting as a personal offense.

Bella continued to mutter angrily and slightly threateningly under her breath until Professor McGonagall shot her a filthy look; Professor McGonagall was no fan of Bella's. Bellatrix completely ignored McGonagall's glare, so I, seeing no other option, kicked her under the table. That shut her up.

I didn't really pay attention to the rest of the Sorting; I had no reason to now that Sirius had been sorted. Of course, I greeted every new Slytherin as befitted a prefect, but I didn't pay attention in between new Slytherins. Most of my concentration that evening was on keeping Bella from marching over to the Gryffindor table and making a scene.

I was mildly successful, and Bella agreed to hold off on her "discussion" with Sirius until the following morning.

That "discussion" was the reason for my presence outside of Gryffindor Tower on the first morning of the new term; I thought it my duty to warn Sirius of the explosion making its way up from the dungeons.

He emerged from his common room about ten minutes after my arrival. He was flanked by three boys, none of whom I paid much attention to.

I would like to say that my first encounter with Remus Lupin stands out clearly in my mind, but really, all it left was a vague impression of brown hair and an honest smile.

I warned Sirius of Bella's approach, and Sirius managed to avoid her until late in the afternoon. The resulting argument wasn't pretty; their arguments never were.

The argument progressed along predictable lines: Sirius was disgracing the family and Bellatrix was blaming him for something he claimed to not have much control over (I always suspected that he had nudged the hat away from putting him in Slytherin, but I never discussed it with him).

There was, of course, nothing Bellatrix could do about Sirius' house placement, so after their argument had run its course, the two of them reverted back into their usual somewhat close, though somewhat tense relationship. They didn't get to see each other very much anyway; seventh year Slytherins didn't have much contact with first year Gryffindors, cousin or no.

I met Remus properly about a week later. I was sitting on the edge of the lake doing my homework with Marlene McKinnon, who was my best friend at the time. Marlene had begun a relationship with Fabian Prewett over the summer and it was all she could talk about.

The relationship ensured that I would be around Fabian, and his twin brother Gideon by extension, quite a lot that year. This arrangement made me slightly uncomfortable since, although I had no problem with Gideon and Fabian, I knew that their older sister Molly hated me.

The Prewett family wasn't held in very high regard by my family, who kindly referred to them as "nasty liberal purebloods." In my family's eyes, the Prewetts were nearly as bad as the Weasleys, who were the most prominent blood traitor family in Britain.

Molly Prewett was in a relationship with Arthur Weasley. She was also in the same year as Bella. Frankly, I would've hated me too.

Anyhow, it was that day by the lake, listening to Marlene analyze something or other Fabian had said over lunch, that Sirius took it upon himself to introduce me to his friends.

He sauntered over and greeted us with a suave, casual sort of smile which he perfected over his years at Hogwarts, to the general appreciation of the female half of the school.

"Hello ladies," he said with a smile. On either side of him were the three boys I had noticed that morning outside of Gryffindor.

"Your cousin?" Marlene asked me, in a mildly interested voice. Without waiting for my response she cast her eyes over his friends and she stopped on the skinny boy with the untidy black hair.

"Hey Potter," she said casually. Their parents belonged to the class of pureblood families who were slightly more respected than the Weasleys and the Prewetts, but who were still classified by families like mine as "those liberal purebloods;" the word "liberal" was always uttered in a particular disapproving tone of voice.

After the greeting was returned ("'Sup McKinnon?"), Sirius began the introductions.

Looking back, these introductions seemed oddly important to Sirius, he seemed to want very much for me to like his friends; my approval was always very important to him, although he never told me.

"This is Peter," he began, turning my attention to the short, fat, timid looking boy standing to his left. I greeted Peter cordially and he nervously returned the greeting. I never really warmed up to Peter, and he always seemed slightly afraid of me.

"This is Remus," said Sirius, motioning towards the boy standing between him and Peter. Remus, unlike Peter, smiled, looked me straight in the eye, shook my hand, and said that it was nice to meet me. I remember smiling to myself, surprised at how polite and mature he was, those being two qualities not often found in eleven year old boys.

I always considered him to be the most reliable and trustworthy of Sirius' friends, and over the years this impression was tarnished only once (although that one occasion did significantly lower my opinion of him for quite a time).

After meeting and greeting James, who reminded me so strongly of Sirius that I nearly laughed out loud, the four of them plopped down with me and Marlene.

We in the midst of the sort of conversation prefects always seem to have with first years, you know the kind: "So how are you liking Hogwarts so far?" and "Are you enjoying your classes?" when Lucius Malfoy, my fellow Slytherin prefect, approached our group with my thirteen year-old sister, Narcissa, in tow. She always seemed to follow him around.

Lucius cast an appraising eye over the six of us, sneering slightly at James and Marlene, giving Sirius a disdainful, yet interested sort of glance, and completely disregarding the existence of Peter and Remus.

"Andromeda," he said with an annoyingly responsible inflection in his voice, "Professor Slughorn wants a word with us. I told him I'd fetch you."

I did not at all appreciate being "fetched" by Lucius Malfoy. Lucius never seemed to grasp that I, in fact, did not like him, at all. The crush on me he had developed in our first year never really went away (this seemed to amuse Bella just as much as it pissed off Narcissa) but merely lurked beneath the surface.

As I wasn't in the mood for a verbal sparring match with Lucius (he would have taken it as flirtation), I followed him back to the school. Marlene, looking slightly put out, and excused herself to go find Fabian.

Narcissa stayed behind to talk with Sirius. I suspect that this "talk" consisted of Narcissa telling Sirius exactly what he was doing/what he had done wrong and why it was wrong.

I came into contact with Sirius and his friends rather a lot over the next three years, and got to know them rather well, but I didn't pay them much attention. I spent the majority of that time period either worrying about Bellatrix or being preoccupied with my secret relationship with Ted Tonks, a muggle-born boy in my year.

After I left Hogwarts, I was quite neatly cut off from Sirius. My family did everything they could to keep me from having contact with Sirius and vice versa.

However, in the summer before his sixth year of Hogwarts, Sirius joined the ranks of the Black family outcasts. As a result, I saw much more of him, Remus, James, and even Peter, than I had in the past couple of years.

I watched the four of them grow into semi-adults. I watched them as they fought in the Order of the Phoenix, and I watched as they disappeared one by one. James was lost to murder, Peter fled to the sanctuary of an unknowing wizarding family, Sirius was carted off to Azkaban, and Remus was left alone to rebuild what was left of his life.

I didn't see Remus very much after the war. Looking back, I think we were avoiding each other. Seeing him bought back memories of all I had lost, and I'm sure I did the same to him.

We flitted in and out of each other's awareness over the following years. I would be walking into Flourish and Blotts and he would be walking out, or we'd end up next to each other on line in Madame Malkin's.

We'd always greet each other pleasantly, discuss how it had been far too long since we had last seen each other, and then we'd agree to make a lunch date. We would then forget about each other until our next meeting during which the same conversation would take place. We never did have that lunch.

I see now that we were both hiding from the past. We reminded each other of all we had lost, and it was easier to avoid each other than to look back.

It was during the Second War that Remus came back into my life, and when he did it was in a way I never would have imagined.

That, however, is another story.


	2. Bill

_This chapter came out pretty well. Andromeda gave me a bit of trouble in the middle, but I got her to cooperate, somewhat._

**Chapter Two: Bill**

"God I hate her," I said as I stuffed my tenth chocolate frog unceremoniously into my mouth.

Marlene murmured sympathetically from behind me as she attempted to put my hair into the trendy, but complicated, style she had seen in the latest issue of _Witch Weekly_.

"I'll bet she hasn't had a good shag in years, that's why she decided to ruin my life," I continued as I viciously tore the wrapping off yet another chocolate frog.

"Oh come on Andy," said Marlene in an annoyingly patient voice from behind me, "your family was bound to find out about you and Ted eventually."

Marlene was right, of course, but I hadn't wanted them to find out via Bella's nasty future mother-in-law; I had wanted it to happen on my own terms, though what those terms were I couldn't have told you.

It was the winter holiday of my seventh year of school. It was a good year; I was at the top of my year and I was the Head Girl. The icing on the cake was that Ted was Head Boy.

It's a generally accepted fact that the key to having a love life at Hogwarts was to be a prefect. This being you true, you can imagine what it does for the relationship when you are Head Girl and your boyfriend is Head Boy (I do believe that the fact that a muggle-born beat him out for Head Boy causes Lucius pain to this day).

My parents usually had a ball at our manor around this time every year, but this year my parents elected instead to throw a large, elaborate dinner party in honor of Bella's recent engagement to Rudolphus Lestrange.

The guest list for this party included many of Bella and Rudolphus' friends, none of whom I had very much desire to be around, several of father's more questionable business associates, our cousins from both the Black and the Rosier sides of the family, the Lestranges, the Malfoys, the Zabinis, and several other prominent pureblood families of the time.

My parents were quite busy that season; father was always in his office conducting meetings with his business associates, and mother was very busy planning the wedding and the dinner party. Consequently, Narcissa and I were left very much to our own devices.

Lucius, having finally accepted that I might not return his amorous feelings, had turned reluctantly to Narcissa, who was more than happy to receive his attentions.

Bella's preoccupation with her upcoming wedding, and the "duties" that went along with her political affiliation (as I chose to think of it at the time), and Narcissa's infatuation with Lucius meant that neither of them took much notice of what I was up to. This combined with my parents' relative absence gave me ample opportunity to sneak out and meet Ted, opportunities which I took full advantage of.

A few nights before the party, Ted took me around London to show me the lovely muggle Christmas decorations. At the end of the evening he dropped me off outside the Leaky Cauldron and bid me farewell with a kiss.

Unfortunately for me, we were spotted by Lucretia Lestrange, Bella's future mother-in-law. She seemed almost inappropriately pleased by what she had seen, but managed to maintain a disapproving tone in her voice as she informed me that my parents would most certainly be hearing about this. She swept imperiously away after making this announcement. To be perfectly honest, I was terrified.

I had a terrible case of the jitters on the night of the party; I knew Mrs. Lestrange was going to be there, and I was fairly certain that she wouldn't miss an opportunity to take my family down a peg.

At the party, Mrs. Lestrange sat across and a couple of seats down from me. I knew she hadn't told anyone yet, and I made a point of not making eye contact with her.

About an hour into the party, the conversation turned predictably to politics, and when I say "politics" I mean a discussion of the pros, and only the pros, of what, for all intents and purposes, was genocide. Of course, none of them actually uttered the term "genocide," but the entire conversation was centered on what a shame it was that we were forced to come into contact with mudbloods on a daily basis and how hopefully someone will put a stop to it.

Nobody mentioned Voldemort or the Death Eaters by name, but everyone knew that they were the "someone" who would put an end to our forced socialization with muggle-borns.

I had already heard everything they were saying about ten times over. With Bellatrix as a sister it was practically inevitable not to have heard it. Thus, I spent the duration of the discussion either staring aimlessly into space or exchanging covert eye rolls with Sirius.

"Yes, it's such a shame that so many pureblood families have decided to follow the lead of that muggle loving fool Albus Dumbledore. Even our own children are being sucked into that sort of nonsense," Mrs. Lestrange paused mid-sentence and turned to face me, "isn't that right Andromeda?"

Up until this point, I had been concentrating rather intensely on pushing a piece of chicken across my plate, so when I heard her say my name I reacted with a start. I looked up and saw her fixing me with a look that was both innocent and malevolent at once.

"You know what I'm talking about dear," she said, still with that faux-innocent expression on her face. I didn't respond. "That night, outside the Leaky Cauldron…"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was she really doing this, now, at her son's engagement party?

"What are you talking about Lucretia?" asked my mother in a sharp voice.

"Surely Andromeda's told you….she hasn't? Oh dear. Well, I hate do hate to be the bearer of news like this, but well, I suppose that it's my duty tell you."

"Tell me what, Lucretia?" asked my mother in a hard, cold voice.

I've always felt strangely detached from what happened next. Whenever I look back upon it, it plays over in my head in an as though it wasn't really me in that room that day, it's almost like viewing a scene from one of those dramatic films that Ted always used to make me watch.

"Well," she began in a voice which was both hesitant and eager at the same time, "a few days ago I witnessed your daughter being rather, ehm, _cozy _with some mudblood boy outside of the Leaky Cauldron." She was obviously very pleased with herself.

"Andromeda?" my mother asked me incredulously. I looked at her and raised my eyebrows; I couldn't bring myself to respond. "Is this true?"

I shrugged noncommittally.

"Yes, yes, I suppose it is," I replied in an oddly calm voice. I remember being slightly shocked at my honesty, but really, I was sick of the lying, sick of sneaking around.

Everyone in attendance looked shocked. I was the docile one, the quiet one, always the good daughter, always quiet and demure at my parent's events. No one expected this sort of thing from me, perhaps from Sirius, but never from me.

"Yes, she's been sneaking going behind your back with him for over a year," said Narcissa, shooting me a look of disgust. "I guess she didn't think I noticed them sneaking around together."

I remember being slightly surprised that Narcissa had noticed, and what's more, had kept it a secret, but that's the only emotion I can remember feeling.

"Very astute Narcissa," I said in a quiet, detached voice.

My mother stood up from the table, glaring at me.

"You ungrateful little…" my mother spluttered, obviously not able to choose a word nasty enough to fully encompass the seriousness of my crime.

Anger bubbled in my stomach. What the hell did I owe her? She didn't give a damn when I came home with eleven outstanding OWLS. She has barely acknowledged it when I was made Head Girl. When Professor Slughorn told my parents that I was one of the brightest and most motivated female Slytherins he had met in years, they didn't utter a word of congratulations; to the contrary, they waited until he left so they could criticize his social-climbing tendencies.

When Marlene was made a Prefect her parents threw her a party. When she made nine outstanding OWLS and two exceeds expectations, her parents took her to Italy for a month. The only time my parents ever seemed proud of me was during the two years I spent in a relationship with the oldest son of a prominent pureblood family. All of this, and _I _was the one accused of being ungrateful?

"Ungrateful?" I asked in the same detached tone, keeping the anger in my stomach out of my voice, "what on earth do I have to be grateful for? What could I possibly owe you?"

Neither of my parents responded, I think the reality of what I had said had rendered them temporarily silent. My mother was the first to get thoughts back together.

"Andromeda Violetta Black, you leave this room and go upstairs. _Now_. Your father and I will inform Albus Dumbledore that you will not be returning to Hogwarts. Now go, we will be discussing this later, you can count on it."

"No, I don't think I want to go to my room. I will most certainly not be leaving Hogwarts, and I fully continue on continuing my relationship with Ted, that's his name, you know, Ted, not 'that mudblood.' "

"Well, if that's the case then you can get out of this house; this family does not welcome blood-traitors." She smiled at me triumphantly. She thought she had me there, she thought that she won, she didn't think that there was anything in the world that could make me leave Bellatrix and Narcissa. That explained the lack of serious anger in her tone; she didn't think I had the nerve the do anything drastic. She was wrong.

"Why yes, yes, I think I will leave."

I'm still very proud of how I conducted myself. I could have yelled and screamed at her, I could have made a scene. Instead I calmly summoned my school trunk from upstairs and walked out the door.

I said that I remember this night almost as though I was watching a film. Even today, I can clearly see the expression on everyone's face. There is only one face, only one expression, which I can't recall, that I can't see, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes I'm glad that I can't remember how Bella's face looked that night.

I know that, in some ways, I broke her heart that night. I was her best friend, her confidant, the only person she would allow herself to open up to, and I left her. If I hadn't left that night, then perhaps Dora and Ted would have made it, but then, if I hadn't left, then I wouldn't have had a Dora and a Ted to lose.

I walked down the drive to the road with my trunk floating in the air ahead of me. When I reached the road, I lit the tip of my wand to summon the Knight Bus. As it pulled up, I heard footfalls coming down the drive as if someone was running towards me.

"Andy!" Sirius panted, "Andy wait!"

I hesitated as the door to the bus opened.

"Andy, Andy you can't leave," he said, still slightly out of breath, as he looked up at me pleadingly.

"I can't stay Sirius."

"Andy, I," Sirius seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say. He was used to being the cool, detached guy who was impossible to faze. This was a challenge to him. "I need you here. You, I mean, you're, you're the only person I can talk to, the rest of them, they don't, they don't understand."

That was as close as Sirius ever came to saying "I love you." I was quite proud of him; our family wasn't prone to expressing deep emotions.

I handed the conductor a couple of Galleons, and then turned back to Sirius with what must have been a sad sort of smile.

"Sirius, I will always be there for you if you need me. I'm going to stay with the McKinnons, James knows where they live. If you need me before school starts back up, he'll know where to find me."

I gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, and boarded the bus. The full impact of what had just happened didn't hit me until I was halfway to the McKinnon's.

That is how I came to be sitting on Marlene's bedroom floor stuffing my face with chocolate frogs.

I continued to abuse all aspects of Mrs. Lestrange's being, from her outdated hairdo to her overlarge rear end, to her sagging bosom. Marlene calmly finished doing my hair and kept silent; she knew that it was probably best to keep quiet and let me finish my rant in peace.

She has just put the finishing touches on my hairdo when an extremely excited Fabian Prewett burst into her bedroom.

"Marlene!" he gasped, obviously very excited, "Molly's having a baby!"

She stared at him blankly.

"What?"

"Molly, she just started having those pain things chicks get when they're going to pop out a kid!"

Marlene and I were mildly disgusted by the phrase "pop out a kid," but he was talking again before either of us had the chance to reprimand him.

"Well c'mon, let's go!" he said.

"Go where?" asked Marlene, evidently quite confused.

"To St. Mungo's, to see the baby," he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "I'm going to be an uncle, and I want you there Marlene."

Although I'm sure that this request made her feel rather awkward — she wasn't related to either Arthur or Molly, and while she and Molly were friends, they were nowhere near close enough to merit Marlene's attendance at the birth of her son — but the romantic value of her boyfriend wanting her present to witness the birth of his nephew overcame this and she agreed to accompany him.

"You should come too Andy," he said as an afterthought.

"What?" I asked incredulously with a mouthful of chocolate frog (which I'm sure was a lovely sight); he was asking me to attend the birth of a child to a man I hardly knew and a woman who hated me.

"Fabian, congratulations, but Molly hates me, and I barely know Arthur. Plus, I'm hardly presentable enough to go out in public."

"Nah, she doesn't hate you, and you look just fine. C'mon, you'll be the uncle's honorary guest."

When I still didn't reply, he became impatient, pulled me up off the floor by my arm, and shepherded me out the bedroom door and to the fireplace to floo over to Mungo's with him and Marlene. When we got there we were directed to the waiting room outside of Delivery Room B.

I had somehow managed to be in the waiting room during the birth of Molly Weasley's first child and I had no idea what I was doing there.

I retreated to the back of the room, and did everything I could to make myself invisible. I'm pretty sure that everyone in the room was too excited for the upcoming birth to take much notice of me, although this didn't occur to me back then.

An hour or so later, an ecstatic Arthur emerged from the delivery room with a tiny bundle in his arms; it had been a quick and easy delivery.

I only actually saw Arthur for a couple of seconds before the multitude of Weasleys and Prewetts in the room converged upon him and the newborn to play multiple rounds of pass the baby.

The crowd began to thin about an hour later; they all seemed to have had their fill of making ridiculous noises and faces at the baby. It became increasingly difficult to remain unnoticed in this ever shrinking crowd, and eventually Arthur noticed me at the back of the room. He blinked confusedly.

"Andromeda? What are you doing here?"

I was somewhat surprised by the lack of hostility in Arthur's voice, although he may have been too surprised by my presence to even register hostility.

"I was, erm, at Marlene's and then Fabian burst in and said that Molly was having a baby and that I should come, so he pulled me out of the room and erm, here I am…Congratulations."

I can't remember the last time I babbled that badly.

Arthur still seemed a bit confused, but then Fabian confirmed that he had dragged me there. I don't really think Arthur cared very much; he was too thrilled by the birth of his son to really care about, or even notice, anything else.

Molly and I got to know each other better through the war years, although we were never what you could call close. We were both on the sidelines of the Order of the Phoenix, and while we weren't members, we were close to enough to so many members of the Order that we were given the status of "honorary" members.

Dora and Charlie, Molly's second son, were the same age, so Molly and I would spend time together while they had play dates. Through these occasional gatherings, I came to know Bill Weasley moderately well.

At Hogwarts, although he was two years older than them, Bill spent quite a bit of time with Charlie and Dora. The three of them remained close friends, and when Bill graduated, Dora and Charlie continued their friendship and even dated for a short period of time until they decided that they worked better as friends than as a couple.

When Bill graduated he became a curse-breaker for Gringotts and moved abroad. I didn't see him for quite a time after he left Hogwarts. Charlie followed Bill abroad, although his destination was Romania, not Egypt. It was quite a time before I saw Charlie again as well.

I didn't really know any of Molly's other children very well, so without Charlie and Dora around, and the two of us lost any real reason to see each other regularly. We kept up a casual friendship and would have lunch occasionally. She would ask how Dora was doing in Auror training, and I'd ask how Bill and Charlie were doing abroad and how her other five children were doing at school, but that was it. It was hardly a deep friendship.

It wasn't until the Quidditch World Cup during Dora's first year as a fully qualified Auror, that I saw Bill and Charlie again—but the hectic circumstances of that event kept us from having a nice catch up session—and it wasn't until after the Second War that I reconnected with the Weasleys.

However, my reconnection with the Weasleys, like Remus' re-entry into my life, is another story.


	3. Dora

_This is set during winter break of Dora's fifth year, sorry about the lack of specification._

**Chapter Three: Dora**

"I think I'd like to be an Auror," she announced, taking a thoughtful bite of her chicken.

I swallowed my drink the wrong way; Ted pounded me on the back until I had finished coughing.

"You'd like to do what dear?" I asked once I had regained my composure, hoping that I'd heard her incorrectly.

"Well, they keep telling us how important this year is for our future and stuff, so I looked through the pamphlets they gave us, and I think I'd really like to be an Auror."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it. I then opened my mouth again only to close it for a second time.

Ted, sensing my distress, squeezed my hand under the table.

"What makes you want to be an Auror, Dora?" he asked her.

"Well, you know, it's not the sort of thing that could ever get boring, and I'd be able to put my Metamorphagus skills to good use, and my grades are good enough, and it, it just seems like a worthwhile career."

"It's a dangerous career," I cut in, a bit more sharply than I had intended.

"Mum," she began in what I refer to as her eye-rolling-long-suffering voice, "being an Auror is hardly suicide. I know a lot of bad shit happened during the war, but the war's over."

"Don't swear dear, and just because the war is over does not mean that the Dark Lord is gone for good."

"Andy, it creeps me out when you refer to him as the 'Dark Lord' can't you just call him 'You-Know-Who' or 'Voldemort' like everyone else?" Ted interjected.

I rolled my eyes. Only Death Eaters referred to him as "The Dark Lord," so I suppose that that's why it upset him.

"Ok fine, _Voldemort_. Are you happy?"

"Oh, just dandy."

I made a face at him and then turned back to Dora who seemed relatively unfazed by my use of the name.

"What makes you think that he's going to come back?" she asked me incredulously.

"What makes you think he's gone for good?" I countered and then continued on before she had time to answer. "Dora, terrible things happened to Aurors during the war."

She rolled her eyes. She really was overly fond of doing that.

"Mum, just because _that_ happened to Frank and Alice doesn't mean that it's going to happen to everyone who decides to become an Auror."

Dora had been eight years old when the wizarding community learned of what had happened to the Longbottoms. Ted and Frank had been best friends throughout their years at Hogwarts, and through them, Alice and I had become rather close. When Frank and Alice got married Ted was their best man and Dora was the flower girl, and when they had their son they asked Ted and I to be his god-parents.

Ted, seeing the consternation on my face, took it upon himself to talk Dora out of it.

"Dora, your mother's aversion to your career choice doesn't have much to do with the Longbottoms—"

"Oh, I know what this is about," she interrupted Ted, "this is about your mad sister, isn't it mum?"

Dora always referred to Bella as "your mad sister." I think it was her way of dealing with the sad reality of my family. I supposed that I was done beating around the bush.

"Well, yes," I replied as I lay my fork across my plate and looked her straight in the eye, "yes, this is about Bellatrix." I could tell that she was about to interrupt me, so I put my hand up to stop her.

"I know she's in Azkaban, but when Voldemort returns, which will, in all likelihood, occur sooner rather than later, he will break Azkaban open and she'll escape. She'll have you down as a target anyway, but you being an Auror will make it ten times easier for her."

Dora rolled her eyes yet again, chuckled at her paranoid mother, cleared her place at the table, and went up to her room.

Ted pulled me close and held me tightly against him upon seeing the look on my face as I watched her walking away.

"Andy, if she wants to be an Auror we can't stop her, no matter how much it scares us," he murmured soothingly.

"Bella's going to kill her, Ted," I murmured into his shoulder.

He smoothed my hair gently, and told me that I was worrying over nothing and that it would all be ok. I disentangled myself from his arms and fixed him with a scowl.

"You think I'm being paranoid, too, don't you know?"

"No, of course not," he said. I could tell that he was lying.

I gave him a strained smile, and began to clear the rest of the table.

Two and a half years later, when Dora received her letter of acceptance into the Auror training program, I held my tongue and congratulated her. This was her life, and if she chose to disregard my worries, then, well, it was her choice.

Most people are unaware of the fact that wizards are just as well versed in Greek mythology and Arthurian legends and such as muggles, only wizards have a slightly different view of these stories. We know that Merlin was real, and it's a documented fact that the infamous harpies were in fact a group of mermaids on a power trip.

There is one mythological figure from the legends surrounding the Trojan War who always stood out in my mind; her name is Cassandra.

According to the stories, she was a priestess of Apollo, but then did something or other which greatly angered Apollo, so he put a curse on her. This curse gave her the power of prophecy, but ensured that her prophecies would never be taken seriously.

When she prophesized the fall of Troy, and the doom of its people, they all ignored her, laughed, rolled their eyes and walked confidently forward into their deaths.

Cassandra and I have a lot in common.


	4. Fleur

**Chapter Four: Fleur**

I first saw Fleur Delacour's name in the _Daily Prophet _within an article that seemed like it was supposed to have been an introductory piece to the Triwizard Champions, but which was really just a long, melodramatic profile of Harry Potter with Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum's names crammed in at the end. No mention was made of Amos Diggory's son.

"Was Rita Skeeter on some sort of mind altering substance when she wrote this?" I asked incredulously, looking up from my copy of the _Daily Prophet_.

Dora looked up distractedly from the file she was reading.

"Isn't that woman always on some kind of mind altering substance?" she replied vaguely.

"Mmm, good point. According to this article, Harry Potter spends every night sobbing over his dead parents."

"Oh yeah right, like any fourteen year-old boy would tell a newspaper a thing like that," she said with a slight sneer.

"Yeah, plus, Harry Potter really isn't a crier."

"Since when are you such an expert on Harry Potter's crying tendencies?"

"Do you really want me to answer that, Dora?"

"Oh," she said with a blink of comprehension, and then returned to her files.

Dora was very well aware of the fact that I was in contact with Sirius, and she may have suspected that I knew where he was hiding, but she never came right out and asked me about it. It was her first year as a fully qualified Auror, and we both felt that discussing Sirius would somehow endanger that position.

I didn't give much though to the Triwizard Tournament, I had no reason to. I would occasionally scan the _Prophet_ in hopes of finding worthwhile piece on it, but that was largely futile.

My real information about the Triwizard came in the form of Charlie Weasley, who was in Britain to assist with the First Task.

"It was so cool; they had to get past these dragons and try to get a golden egg—"

"Isn't that a bit dangerous?" I interrupted.

Charlie and Dora rolled their eyes at each other.

"Of course it's a bit dangerous, Andy, that's the point of the Tournament. But there were tons of dragon control personnel standing by. We weren't going to let any of the champions sustain any serious injuries."

"So how'd they get past it?" Dora asked.

Charlie gave in depth descriptions of how the champions got passed the dragons, he was particularly enthusiastic about Harry's performance (which I already knew the details of; Sirius couldn't keep himself from bragging), but then, Charlie was always enthusiastic about impressive broomstick feats.

"…and Fleur tried to put hers into same kind of trance, but halfway through her go the dragon threw it off and set her skirt on fire. She's quite fit, Fleur," he finished, rather anticlimactically, I must say.

"Well, good, I don't know what I would've done without the information that some eighteen year-old French girl is good looking."

Charlie opened his mouth indignantly, obviously with a clever comeback on the tip of his tongue, but before he was able to utter this comeback, Dora continued onto a completely different line of thought.

"You know, this Tournament thing seems pretty cool, too bad it didn't happen when we were at school."

"Yes dear, because you simply don't have enough danger in your life as it is."

She scowled at me, but Charlie chuckled.

They continued to gossip about old school friends and catch up on each other's lives for a while. Not being particularly interested about who was sleeping with whom, my thoughts wandered back to our discussion of the Tournament.

Charlie's description of Harry's performance in the First Task had made me think of Sirius' latest letter. The letter had mostly contained a detailed blow-by-blow account of Harry's broom stunt, but there was a vaguely unsettled note to the letter in midst of his godfatherly pride, as if he, like me, had sensed that something odd, and most likely very unpleasant, was going on.

The Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup, the attack on Mad-Eye, Harry's entrance into the Tournament, the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins; these things had to add up to something, but we couldn't put our fingers on just what that something was.

The answer came to me in the form of a large, black dog around one in the morning in early June. I was happily asleep next to Ted when I was suddenly awakened by a very loud knock on the door.

Ted gave a particularly loud snore and rolled over. I waited a minute to see if the knock would repeat itself. It did.

Muttering to myself, I pulled on my robe and slippers and proceeded to shuffle downstairs and pull open the door only to see Remus Lupin standing there with a large, black dog at his side.

I blinked.

"Remus?" I was truly shocked; Remus hadn't been to my house since Dora was about eight years old, "what are you doing here?"

"Hello Andromeda. May I come in? It's urgent." He stepped inside without waiting for an answer. The black dog hesitated.

"Come on," he said irately to the dog. The dog hesitated for another second, and then padded over the threshold. Once the dog was inside, Remus closed the door and locked it. He looked around nervously and then ran to close the curtains.

"Remus, what—" before I could finish he shushed me. I didn't appreciate being shushed in my own home, but before I could tell him off, he addressed the dog a second time.

"Ok, I think it's safe."

The dog nodded, and within a few seconds, Sirius stood before me, as if it was perfectly normal for him to be standing in my living room at one in the morning after we hadn't seen each other in thirteen years.

I blinked, searching for something to say.

"Sirius," there was another pause; "you look like shit."

"Well, let's see what you look like after spending twelve years in Azkaban and two more on the run."

He looked me over, and pulled me into a tight one armed hug before I had fully comprehended his presence in my living room.

"You still look wonderful though," he said with a sad smile, and then, completely dropping whatever sentimentality he may have betrayed a minute ago, he became quite businesslike. "I suppose you're wondering what on earth we're doing here at this hour."

"Well, yes, I am, a bit."

Sirius was about to answer when his attention became fixed on the stairs behind me. I turned to see Dora standing there, blinking sleepily.

"What's going on?"

"Is that Dora?" Sirius asked me incredulously.

"Yes it is."

Sirius blinked, astonished. He had least seen her when she was eight years old, so I suppose it was a bit of a shock for him to see this 22 year-old standing in front of him. He looked her over.

"She got big."

"Well she is 22."

He blinked again; obviously slightly shocked by the fact that she was no longer eight years old.

I was suddenly seized with a mad urge to do a bit of maternal bragging; after all, what kind of mother would let an opportunity to brag about her kid pass her by?

"She's an Auror," I told him proudly, letting my aversion to her career fall to the wayside for the moment.

"An Auror?" He seemed quite interested by this piece of information and exchanged a meaningful look with Remus.

"Mum, what's going on?" Dora asked me once more in an agitated manner.

"I don't know Dora, Sirius here was about to tell me when you came downstairs."

We both looked at him. He seemed unsure of where to start, but finally took a deep breath and dove into the explanation.

"Well, I just came from Hogwarts."

"Yes," I prompted, "and…?"

"Well tonight was the night of the Third Task, you know, the last one of the Tournament."

"_And?"_

"And…Voldemort abducted Harry, and used him in his return to his body, Voldemort's back, Andy."

Dora and I stared at him, the silence of the room ringing in our ears.

"He's…"

"…Back, yes."

Dora, seeing the state of shock I was in, decided to take over. She stepped forward and directly addressed Sirius.

"What do you mean he's back?"

"He returned to his body," he repeated, "Harry saw it happen."

Dora and I stared at him blankly. Just then we heard a voice speak out from behind us.

"Sirius? Remus? Andy, what the hell's going on?" asked Ted incredulously.

I turned to see him standing on the first step, blinking in the same way Dora had when she came down. I buried my face in my palm and took a deep, steadying breath.

"Apparently Voldemort's back."

He walked over and stood behind me, putting his hands reassuringly on my shoulders.

"How—?"

"I don't know," I cut him off, "Sirius was about to explain."

We all stared at him attentively.

"Well, Andy, do you remember what I told you about Peter Pettigrew last year?"

I nodded in affirmation.

Once given this affirmation, Sirius launched into an exceedingly long, complicated explanation involving Romania, Bertha Jorkins, Barty Crouch (Jr. and Sr.), Polyjuice Potion, Alastor Moody, and the Triwizard Tournament.

"So," he finished up, "so the Triwizard Cup, which was a Portkey, remember, bought Harry and Cedric to the graveyard where Voldemort was waiting to use Harry in his rebirth ceremony. He murdered Cedric upon their arrival."

The three of us continued to stare at him in shocked disbelief.

"And you—" I began.

"I just came from Hogwarts, the hospital wing to be exact. I was there with Harry and he told me everything. Molly Weasley will be staying with him tonight."

"Is he ok?" asked Dora.

"He's alive," Sirius said simply.

"Who else knows? Cornelius—"

"Fudge chose not to accept that he's back. Dumbledore expects the rest of the Ministry to follow his lead."

"So who else knows that he's back?" Ted asked, his hands tightening slightly on my shoulders.

"Us, Molly, most of the Weasleys, Snape, McGonagall, Dumbledore, and the Death Eaters who managed to stay worm their ways out of Azkaban."

"So what are you—?"

Sirius spoke over me again. That was starting to get on my nerves.

"Dumbledore instructed me to go to Remus' place, and tell him what happened. Once I had done that, we were supposed to alert the old crowd of what happened and get the remains of the Order back together. You're my first stop."

He paused momentarily in his explanation upon seeing the incredulous look on my face.

"Don't worry Andy, I don't expect you to join; I just thought that you'd like to know, for obvious reasons," he told me with a smile. "We need to get going soon, though," he continued, "we have quite a few more stops to make. I do believe that Dedalus Diggle is next on the list."

He paused for a few seconds and considered Dora in a calculating manner which I wasn't sure that I liked.

"Unless," he said, addressing Dora this time, "unless you'd like to join, we could use some Aurors."

"No," I told him firmly, angry that he would even ask her.

Dora ignored me.

"The Ministry's completely ignoring his return?"

"Yes."

"And the only line of defense against him is the Order?"

"Yes," he said again.

She considered it for a moment, looking at him intently, her eyes slightly narrowed. She took a deep breath, and flashed him a bright smile.

"I'm in."

"WHAT?" I shrieked.

Dora and Remus jumped, Sirius winced, and I could feel Ted flinch from behind me.

"You are not under _any circumstances_ joining the Order. I supported you when you decided to become an Auror, but I will not support this."

"Mum," she began placatingly.

"Oh no, don't you 'mum' me, and don't you say anything either," I snapped at Sirius, who had just opened his mouth, "you are not joining the Order. It's bad enough that you're an Auror, but joining the Order would be suicide, Dora."

The tolerating, annoyed expression that had inhabited her face when she had began her attempt to reason with me was slowly being replaced by anger as I continued on my tirade.

"Would you stop being so bloody paranoid?" she finally yelled. "I am so _sick_ of the way you're constantly checking up on me and worrying after me and treating me like some kind moronic of five-year-old who can't wipe her own arse!"

"I am not being paranoid! Do you know what happens to Order of the Phoenix members? Do you? Do you remember what happened to Marlene? Do you recall what happened to Gideon and Fabian? Remember the Longbottoms; do you remember what happened to the Longbottoms, Dora? If you don't have the sense to realize how dangerous joining the Order would be on your own then I have every reason to treat you like a child."

"Just because they ended badly doesn't mean that I will."

I ignored her.

"And none of them had any attachments to Death Eaters. What the _hell_ do you think is going to happen to you?-Bellatrix Lestrange's half-blooded Auror of a niece, do you think she'll invite you over to have a nice little catch-up session over tea and then let you skip on home? Honestly Dora, why don't you just trying giving this thirty seconds of thought?"

"Well, you know what mum? If you actually gave a damn about all those people then perhaps you'd be like the idea that I'll be continuing their fight. And you know what else? All that crap about Bellatrix, and infantilizing me and trying to shelter me from anything bad that could possibly happen, you know what you're doing mum? Do you? You're letting her win."

"How dare you?" I hissed, "how dare you even insinuate that I—"

"Andy, Dora, stop it," interrupted Ted in a calm, quiet voice which shut us both up immediately.

I knew I was going to lose. There was no way I could talk Dora out of this one, not with Sirius and Ted there (I'm sure Remus was on her side as well, but he knew better than to interject his opinion into the conversation). I was suddenly seized with a strong urge to give both Sirius and Ted good hard kicks, and I included Remus in that for good measure. But then, almost as soon as the urge had seized me, it disappeared, leaving me angry, and with a slight headache.

"Fine," I sighed, massaging my head, "fine. You're an adult; you can make your own choices. Do whatever the hell you want. I'm going back to bed."

Halfway up the stairs I turned back to them.

"Thanks for the news Sirius," I said impassionately, "I appreciate it."

I turned back around and continued upstairs.

About half an hour later I heard Ted come back in. He sat down on the bed next to me.

"Andy," he murmured in a would-be reassuring voice as he ran a gentle hand through my hair, and then started again, "Andy, everything will be alright."

I pretended to be asleep.

The next morning Dora and I didn't speak to each other, in fact, we didn't speak to each other properly for nearly a month.

After that night, I didn't really think about the Triwizard Tournament, or any of the champions, for weeks; I had no reason to. For a matter of fact, I didn't hear from or think about much of anyone; the wizarding world seemed to be frozen. It was as if we all knew that we were in the midst of a catastrophe, but few of us were ready to accept the reality of the situation.

About a month and a half after the events of that night, I was running errands in Diagon Alley.

It so happened that I had a stop to make at Gringotts, and to my surprise, I found Bill Weasley working behind the counter.

"Bill," I said happily, "fancy seeing you here."

He looked up and smiled.

"Hey Andy, yeah, I'm taking some time off from the tombs. You know, there are some things going on that need attending to."

He emphasized the word "things" and gave me a highly significant look while saying it.

"Is it going well?"

"It's going as well as can be expected, considering the circumstances," he replied cryptically, assuming that I'd know what he was talking about. I did.

I about to ask him some unimportant question—the kind you ask when you want to continue the conversation but don't have much to say—when an utterly gorgeous blonde woman came around behind the counter and handed Bill a cup of tea.

"Thanks Fleur," he said, flashing a brief, casual smile in her direction as he took a sip.

"Bien sur, Bill, ce n'est pas un problem," she replied with a dazzling smile and fluttering eyelashes as she watched him drink the tea.

Most men would have been drooling at that point, but Bill seemed relatively immune to the intended affects of the eyelash fluttering.

I watched this spectacle rather in a rather amused manner before I realized that there was something oddly familiar about her.

I considered her closely for a minute or two, and kept continued to do so even as she headed down the counter to assist a customer.

"I feel like I've seen her somewhere before," I murmured, trying to figure out where it was that I had seen her.

"Oh, she was the Beauxbatons champion in the Triwizard," he told me.

"Ah, well that explains it."

Bill and I exchanged a bit more, mostly meaningless, small talk. After telling him to send his mother my regards I left without giving Fleur a second thought.

Just the way it had been when I first encountered Remus and Bill, I had no way of knowing just how large a role Fleur would come to play in my life.


	5. Ron and Hermione

_First of all, thank you to my lovely reviewers for the lovely reviews, they are much appreciated._

_Second of all, I'm sorry about the long wait between updates. This chapter gave me a lot of trouble, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but, this is the closest I could get it to how it originally appeared in my mind. _

_Third of all, I'd like to apologize in advance for any typos that may have survived my 25 proofreads…it's quite late._

_I hope you enjoy it._

**Chapter 5: Ron and Hermione**

I chose to give Dora, Remus, Ted, and Sirius a joint funeral. It seemed fitting somehow.

There were no bodies for Ted and Sirius, but I didn't care, not really; funerals are about more than corpses.

More people turned up than I had expected. The entire Order was there, and the Weasleys were sitting a few rows away, I could see most of the surviving Hogwarts faculty, many people whom I vaguely remembered from my time at Hogwarts, a great deal of Ted's and Dora's former co-workers, and large amounts of sobbing teenagers which I could only assume were Remus' former students. There were also some there that I didn't recognize at all.

None of that really mattered to me at the time, though. Their faces were a blur. That day, that week, that month, that year: they were all a blur.

The little man performing the funeral service droned on and on about bravery and sacrifices and so on and so forth. I wasn't listening; his windy eulogy didn't mean much to me and didn't seem to have anything to do with those being mourned.

Their deaths had had little to do with sacrifice. Ted and Dora were killed because Bellatrix wanted them dead. Sirius was dead through a combination of Bella's spite and of his uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remus' death was the only one which could be accurately described as a "sacrifice."

I heard sobbing all around me, but I didn't join in. I don't cry much, and I was certainly not going to break down in public.

I managed to make it through both wars with only three instances of tears. I still don't like to let my feelings show themselves so readily to the world, but I have a shed a tear or two since then.

I cried when Sirius was imprisoned because I desperately needed to believe that at least one member of my family was decent. I had believed in his innocence. I had no proof of his innocence, but I chose to believe in it.

His imprisonment took from me the last member of my family; Regulus was dead, Bellatrix had become someone I didn't want to know, and Narcissa was too busy being Lucius' wife to be anything else.

The second time, after the attack on the Longbottoms, was less about my close relationship with Frank and Alice than it was about all of the other friends I had lost. I hadn't cried at the news of the deaths of the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts, or the Potters, but the Longbottom's fate and Bella's involvement in that fate was the last straw.

Both of those times I sobbed quietly into Ted's shoulder after Dora was in bed; Ted was the only person I had ever allowed to see me cry.

The third time was five days after the Battle of Hogwarts. Five days after Dora and Remus died, five days after Bella's demise, and five days after the close of a war that had dominated the majority of my existence.

Molly and Augusta Longbottom, with whom I had formed an oddly close relationship after the attacks on Frank and Alice, had taken to coming around daily to check up on me; obviously they were under the impression that I was suicidal or something of the like. I appreciated their concern, but these visits annoyed me to no end.

On that fifth day, Molly was checking up on me once again. I finally managed to persuade Molly that I was perfectly fine and that she needn't stay; and by that I mean that I had, for all intents and purposes, kicked her out of the house.

Once she had left, I went upstairs to my bedroom to check on Teddy and make sure that he was still asleep (I kept his crib in my room now; I wasn't comfortable falling asleep without him in my immediate line of vision); he was. I cast a charm around his crib that would let me know if he woke up, and went downstairs to make myself some tea.

When I had found out about Dora's and Remus' deaths, I felt nothing but shock, numbness. I was still grieving for Ted, so I could barely begin to grasp how I was supposed to deal with these most recent losses.

About halfway through my cup of tea, something inside of me snapped. All of the grief, all of the shock, all of the anger converged on me during that cup of tea.

It was almost involuntary; one moment I was calmly sipping my tea, the next moment that cup of tea was on the floor next to the wall, the china shattered and the tea dripping down the walls.

Once that cup had hit the wall, it was like I had opened a door and let some kind of blind rage possess me, and one cup of tea simply wasn't going to appease it.

I went on a rampage; everything mildly breakable that I could get my hands on ended up in a smashed ruin against the wall. Apparently throwing things just wasn't enough; I must have thrown curses as well, because when I calmed down I noticed several burn marks on the wall that could only have been caused by some kind of curse.

I managed to destroy most of my sitting room; I believe that at one point I managed to break a table over my knee before adding it to the pile of rubble.

Just as rapidly as it had entered me, that surge of blind rage made its exit, and left me and left me kneeling on the floor, tears streaking down my cheeks and my throat raw.

I took in the general appearance of my living room with a small amount of shock at the amount of destruction I had managed to cause; Bellatrix was the one who threw these kinds of violent tantrums, not me.

I wasn't able to recall the details of my rampage, the crying, the screaming; of them I had no recollection. I looked down at my hands and registered that there was blood on them. I had some scattered images of objects flying through the air, but that was it.

I stood up and made my way to the kitchen, sidestepping the wreckage that was my living room, and made myself another cup of tea to soothe my throat. I wiped my face with a damp cloth, cleaned the blood off of my hands (I must have crushed a glass curio in my fists before throwing it, that was the only explanation for the blood), and repaired my sitting room in a few swipes of my wand.

A few minutes later, it was as if the whole thing had never happened.

I had cried my fill, and I wasn't about to let everyone there become privy to my personal grief.

The service came to a close, and after a minute or so, the mourners rose, most of them blinking in the way people do when a light is switched on in a dark room.

Many people came up to me in order to express their deepest regrets and condolences. I knew some of them very well, and some I barely recognized.

I remember being surprised at the sheer amount of people that the four of them had managed to touch in their short lives; every person I spoke to had a brief anecdote about an encounter they had had with my daughter, or husband, or cousin, or son-in-law. It was almost overwhelming.

The crowd slowly began to thin, and the Weasleys came into my line of vision. Catching sight of me, Molly scurried over and pulled me into a tight embrace which was stronger than one would expect from such a small woman.

"Oh Andromeda," she said tearfully, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief "I still just can't believe it. I'm so sorry dear."

I couldn't stand it when Molly called me "dear," in fact, I still can't stand it, but I figured that that wasn't that best time to mention it to her.

"Well, Molly, neither of us are strangers to losing a child." I said this with a pang of guilt; I had missed her son, Fred's, funeral which had taken place two days before this one. I just didn't know how I could handle their family's grief while I was struggling with my own. Luckily, they seemed to have understood this and none of them appeared to be annoyed or offended.

Arthur stepped forward next and pulled me into a brief, one armed hug. He said nothing, but gave me a gentle sympathetic smile. I appreciated his brief, quiet smile more than I did the choked up anecdotes of the sobbing hordes.

Charlie then stepped forward. His face was streaked with tears; he had lost one of his best friends. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times; he couldn't seem to verbalize whatever it was that he was feeling. I understood, and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you, Charlie," I said to him quietly. He gave me a grateful smile, and excused himself quickly. I supposed that he didn't wish to tarnish his macho dragon-handler image by being seen sobbing in public.

Bill shot me a sympathetic, comforting glance, but he was too preoccupied with his sobbing wife to say anything more to me at that point.

I didn't know Percy very well, so he gave me a very formal address of sympathy. George wasn't there, probably for the same reason that I hadn't been at Fred's funeral.

After Percy had left, four older teenagers stepped forward. I was fairly positive that the two redheads were Molly's youngest, Ron and Ginny. I had already met Harry Potter, and I assumed that the brown haired girl was Hermione Granger.

They all bore signs of significant grief; it wasn't surprising, they had all been very fond of Dora, Remus, and Sirius.

I smiled at them, not quite sure of what to say. I addressed Harry first, since he was the only one of them I had ever spoken to, however briefly.

"Harry," I said, extending my hand "nice to see you again, despite the less then happy circumstances."

He smiled sadly and shook my hand briefly.

"Ms. Tonks, I'm so sorry," he said in a quiet, slightly raspy voice, his arm around Ginny.

"Don't be sorry, after all, you have just as much to grieve about as anyone else; Sirius was your godfather, after all."

He gave me a sad smile and then Ginny started to speak.

"I can't believe Tonks is dead," she said through the tears which were still coursing down her cheeks, "I just, I just don't understand how she could just be dead, just like that," she was once more overcome by tears and wasn't able to continue.

Dora had always been quite fond of Ginny, and I had been under the impression that Ginny rather admired her.

I smiled sadly down at her.

"Yes, I know exactly what you mean. It doesn't seem real, does it?"

She shook her head.

I heard another sob escape from the brown haired girl. I turned my head to look at her.

"I take it that you're Hermione Granger?"

She seemed momentarily startled that I knew who she was, but then blinked and gave me a gentle nod.

"Yes, Sirius told wrote me a long letter all about how you and Harry helped him escape from Hogwarts, and Remus always spoke glowingly of you, said you were one of the most gifted young witches he had ever met."

She gave me a watery smile.

"And Dora told me quite a bit about you too. Yes, they were all very fond of you."

I fixed my eyes on the last one.

"And I'm assuming that you're Ron."

He smiled at me and shook my hand.

"Sirius spoke very highly of you; he seemed to see you as some kind of a kindred spirit, thought you were a good influence on Harry."

Ron grinned. Hermione looked skeptical. He looked down at her.

"You hear that Hermione? I'm a good influence," he said with a smirk.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Didn't Sirius once get annoyed with Harry for not wanting to sneak out after hours?" she reminded him.

"Erm—"

"Sirius got annoyed with you for not breaking the rules?" I asked Harry incredulously.

"Well, yeah, but it wasn't a big thing."

I stared at them for a moment, and then burst out laughing. That may have been the first time I laughed since I had learned of Ted's death.

"Honestly, some things never change," I said as I chuckled softly, "encouraging his godson to break the rules, did he ever grow up?"

Harry smiled rather unsurely; I looked at him, eyebrows raised, hoping he'd realize that I had just given him an opening. He did.

"Well, I promise you, I'll never openly encourage Teddy to break the rules."

"Well, Harry, I'm sure your father and Sirius would be very upset if you didn't encourage Remus' son to break the rules just a little bit," I told him with a smile.

Harry grinned, and Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were all listening on eagerly. I suspected that the four of them had been very eager for the subject of Teddy to be bought up.

"I would introduce the lot of you to Teddy right now, but his stomach was upsetting him earlier, so he's inside with my mother-in-law at the moment."

They all looked a bit disappointed.

"You can all come by later this week and meet him properly, does that sound good?"

It did.

I chatted with them for a while longer, they seemed eager to discuss Remus, Sirius and Dora. I mostly listened; I knew it could be cleansing to talk about these things.

I noticed more and more people slowly taking their leave as we spoke. Suddenly, through a gap in the still sizeable crowd, I spotted a hauntingly familiar profile standing beside a chair.

Ron, who had been speaking at the time, tapered off when he realized that my attention was directed elsewhere. They all turned to follow the direction of my stare. I noticed a small amount of shock registering across all of their faces.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They all turned back to me, questioningly. I looked back at them.

"Is that—?" I tapered off. I knew exactly who it was; I just couldn't believe that I was seeing her here, at this particular funeral.

"Narcissa Malfoy," Harry confirmed.

"What's _she_ doing here?" asked Ron with an oddly angry note in his voice. He glared over at her and put a protective arm around Hermione. I didn't have the ability to puzzle over that just then.

Her head turned in my direction and our eyes met. We stared at each other for a full minute, neither of us knowing what to do.

I was torn. Part of me had a sudden, wild urge to run forward and embrace her, but as quickly as that urge had hit me; it was gone, replaced by a low, churning anger.

Now, instead of wanting to embrace her, I wanted to hit her. How dared she be here? What did she hope to achieve by forcing her presence upon my personal grief? She still had her husband, she still had her child. Was she there to flaunt it, to mock my misfortune?

In the midst of these anger-filled musings, I was surprised to find that my feet were carrying me towards her. Perhaps whatever it was that had caused me to smash that fateful teacup was the same thing which was now forcing my feet forward towards this sister I hadn't seen, or spoken to, in years.

"Narcissa," I said tonelessly once I had arrived in front of her, "what are you doing here?"

She swallowed, opened her mouth, and closed it again, only to open and close it a second time.

"Well?" I didn't have time for her hemming and hawing.

She finally spoke.

"Andromeda, I—" she tapered off, obviously at a loss for words.

"I really don't have time for this right now, Narcissa. Why don't you go back to your family and spare me the details of this little drama you seem to be going through." My tone remained distant, impartial, and without a trace of anger.

I turned to leave, and had begun to walk away when she spoke again.

"No! Andromeda, wait. Come back, please."

I didn't want to turn around, I didn't want to continue to acknowledge her presence, but that same thing which had forced me to walk over to her was now forcing me to walk, once more, into her presence. I turned to face her, eyebrows raised.

She looked me in the eye. It wasn't the arrogant, superior look that I had come to expect from her. Instead she looked lost, vulnerable.

"I just wanted to tell you," she paused and swallowed again "I wanted to tell you that you were right, about everything."

I had no idea how to respond to that, in fact, I was having trouble figuring out exactly what she was talking about. I opened my mouth to tell her this, but she spoke again before I could get the words out.

"You remember how it was when all of this started. They told us that being pureblood meant that we were safe, and that as long as we aligned ourselves with the right side, nothing bad could happen to us," she paused again, obviously trying to get her thoughts in order.

"So Lucius and I aligned ourselves with the right side, and were rewarded for our loyalty. When the Dark Lord returned, Lucius returned to him with just as much loyalty, as he had had before. But this time, instead of rewards, and respect, we were given nothing but pain, fear, and humiliation."

He voice cracked and she stopped speaking for a moment. Part of me wanted to interrupt her self-pitying little speech to remind her that she and Lucius had denied their involvement with the Death Eaters after Lord Voldemort's first defeat, and that surely this was the reason for his treatment of her and Lucius. I also wanted to remind her that surely Lucius' display of incompetence at the Ministry had been a factor in his treatment of them. However, I thought it best to just let her continue; I was curious to see where this was going.

"He tried to kill my son, Andromeda. We gave him our service, and loyalty, and he tried to kill our son."

I was beginning to have a difficult time keeping my mouth shut.

"I spent my entire life believing that being a pureblood singled me out for some kind of higher purpose, and that loyalty to the Dark Lord would bring us glory, but since his return we've been treated like nothing but prisoners."

I was beginning to see where she was going with this, so I stopped myself from informing her that she was repeating herself, and waited for her to continue

"He made Draco do and witness so many horrible things, and, and, and it all stopped making sense. We had been loyal to him for so many years, and this was our reward?"

She began to shake, and her hands were restlessly twisting the funeral program she was holding as she looked past me towards whatever it was that she was about to describe to me.

"One day, after he had forced Draco to torture a prisoner," here, her hands shook so badly that the funeral program was torn clean in two, "I remembered an argument I overheard a long time ago between you and Bella. You were telling her that, that the Dark Lord didn't care about her, or any of us, and that he was using us to achieve his own ends, and that we were only as good as our last act. She got annoyed told you that his loyal followers would be rewarded for their service, and then she stormed out. Neither of you knew that I had overheard it."

Her recollection gave me a bit of a jolt. I had long forgotten that argument with Bella.

It was the summer after her seventh year. She was idly planning her future, and I was hanging out of my bedroom window, anxiously scanning the skies for an owl that could be carrying my OWL scores.

"I'm not sure, I suppose I'll spend a year doing some traveling, and at some point I'll probably get married, to Rudolphus of course. And then, after that, well, there is a war to be fought after all," Bella said to me as she lay lazily on my bed.

"Bella, you had some of the highest tests scores in your year. You're capable of more than murder," I remembered saying to her, naïvely believing that I was going to get through to her.

She sat up and looked at me with an expression I wasn't quite able to read.

"Andromeda, I'll think about careers and all that once we've won the war. This war is more important than my test scores; when we win, the whole world will be open to us (by "us" she meant the purebloods), and those who have supported the Dark Lord from the beginning will be rewarded beyond anything you can possibly imagine."

I remember hating the passion I could see on her face, hear in her voice.

"Do you really believe that Bella? Do you really believe that you'll be rewarded? Do you really think that you, and Lucius, and Rudolphus, and Rabastan, and the rest of you are anything more than pawns?"

She stared at me, her expression unreadable, yet tinged with shock, and a little bit of anger. I continued on, startled by the vehemence of my own words.

"He doesn't care about you Bella. He doesn't care about any of you. All he cares about is his own power. To him, your loyalty will only be as good as your last act."

She continued to do nothing but stare at me with that blank look on her face. She finally opened her mouth and spoke in a nasty, condescending, mocking tone of voice that she had never used on me before, and that I never wanted her to use on me again.

"Obviously you've been spending too much of your time with that McKinnon girl and that Prewett filth. I've always thought that those blood-traitors you insist on spending your time with were bad influences and this just proves it. I'm ashamed to hear you, my own sister, talking like that."

The implication that I was so easily swayed by the opinions of others was one that I found to be highly offensive.

"I wasn't 'influenced' by anyone, Bella. This is me speaking, me, not any of my friends," I informed her angrily. "You're talking about pouring your heart and your soul into a war headed by a man who has neither. He'd watch you die without turning a hair if it benefited him."

"No Andy. I refuse to believe that you formed those beliefs on your own. That would mean that you're a blood-traitor, and my sister is _not _a blood-traitor."

We stared at each other angrily. She suddenly dropped her angry demeanor, and it was quickly replaced by a caring, passionate one.

"Andromeda, when we win this war we will be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams and those who oppose us will be disposed of the minute our victory is absolute."

She walked over to me and placed a hand on my cheek; I spotted a fanatical gleam in her eyes as she spoke.

"Andromeda, don't let yourself become part of that second group, I'd hate for that to be your fate." Her tone was oddly tender, yet subtly threatening at the same time. She dropped her hand from my cheek and straightened herself up. She ran her eyes over me once more, and then turned to leave. As she reached the door, she turned back to me, her hand on the knob.

"I am going to pretend that this conversation never happened, and I advise that you do the same." With that she turned and left, leaving me staring dejectedly after her.

"Andromeda?"

Narcissa's voice pulled me back to the present. I realized that I had been silent for a full minute as that long-forgotten argument had flooded back into my mind.

"Yes, go on Narcissa," I told her softly.

"So, I remembered overhearing that argument, and being shocked that you would say such things. I agreed with Bella, and I continued to agree with her up until a year and a half ago, when he tried to kill Draco. I realized—I realized that you were right; we really were only as good as our last act. And if you were right, then that meant that Bella was wrong, and if Bella was wrong than it meant that everything I had taken for granted, everything I had staked my life upon, was a lie," she paused to look up at me, her eyes looking as lost as ever.

"Andromeda," she said, her voice sounding as if it was on the brink of tears, her hands continuing to twist the poor broken paper, "I was living a lie. It was all a lie."

She stopped and looked tremulously from side to side, as if she was expecting Bella, or Lord Voldemort to suddenly leap out of the hedge and strike her down for uttering this outrageous blasphemy. Once she had convinced herself that neither of the two had returned from the grave for the purpose of being privy to this confession of her lack of faith, she continued on.

"Once, once I had realized that, I just, I stopped caring about the war and put all of my effort into trying to keep Draco and Lucius alive. I let some horrible, horrible things happen," she trembled as she said this, her eyes once again staring past me at an event I was grateful I couldn't see, "but it was worth letting those things happen if I was allowed to keep my husband and son. Their lives were the only things I cared about anymore."

I could see tears forming in her eyes.

"And then one day in the middle of March—"

Here she stopped dead, staring at me with a look that was close to fear.

"Go on," I urged her.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, looking slightly nauseated. She had to take quite a few deep breaths before she was able to continue.

"One day, in the middle of March, Bella came in, seeming incredibly pleased with herself about something."

I could see where this was going, and I wasn't sure if I wanted her to continue.

"So I asked her what she was so pleased about, and she looked at me with a victorious kind of look in her eyes, and told me that," her hands twisted again; by now that funeral program was reduced to nothing more than a few pathetic scraps of paper, falling through her fingers onto the ground, "she told me that she had just, that she had just killed your husband."

It was like some giant hand was tightly squeezing the inside of my body. I had always been positive that Bellatrix had been responsible for Ted's death, but hearing it straight from Narcissa's mouth, hearing her confirmation of my suspicions, was almost too much; I almost couldn't handle it.

All at once, I wanted to vomit, and cry, and scream at her for contributing to my grief. How could she have believed that this funeral was the appropriate place to inform me of the manner of his death? Was it really _that _important that she relay her little epiphany to me? Of course she wouldn't realize just how inappropriate this was. Maybe she had realized that she was living a lie, but obviously that realization had done nothing to diminish her selfishness.

But the hand clutching my innards had rendered me speechless, so Narcissa was able to continue without any interruption from me.

"When she told me about it I-I was horrified. I never wanted your husband dead; I didn't understand why he was dead. You, you never did anything wrong, in fact, you were right, I, and Bella, we were the ones who were wrong. After she told me about it she watched me expectantly, like she thought I would be pleased, or something. I remember saying something like 'oh, that's nice' before I managed to excuse myself. But it-it wasn't nice, it was horrible. I hated it. I hated that you had lost your husband for, for no reason."

A tear made its way down her cheek, her hands twisting themselves together in the absence of that long gone funeral program.

"And then, and then a few moths later, at the Battle of Hogwarts, I wasn't fighting, I didn't care about the war anymore, I just wanted to find Draco and get him home safely, but I couldn't find him anywhere and I was running through the corridors trying to find him with all of the death and terror surrounding me, and, and I was somewhere, on the fifth floor maybe, I don't remember exactly where I was, when I saw Bella—"

There she stopped again, tears flowing more freely from her eyes. I noticed that she was shaking, and her wide eyes were once again staring horrified past me at a scene that had obviously been haunting her.

"—And she was standing over your daughter," here Narcissa began to cry in earnest, but she continued to speak through her tears, "and she was saying something to her, I don't remember what. I think your daughter was injured, because she didn't seem to be able to stand up, and she must have been disarmed because I couldn't see her wand anywhere, and Bella had that look on her face—that sneering, vindictive kind of smile she has—and I-I knew that she was about to do it, Avada Kedavra."

I could feel waves of horror shooting through my body, making my hands shake nearly as hard as Narcissa's were.

"So I-I told her to stop. I don't remember what I said, it was something like 'You can't kill her, that's Andromeda's girl,' which she obviously already knew, and Bella gave me a bored kind of look and said 'Yes, Cissy, I know exactly who this is.' And, I didn't say anything; it was like my mind went blank, or something. So, I suppose she was convinced that I wouldn't interrupt her again, so she raised her wand, and-and I don't know what came over me, but all of the sudden I was running at her and trying to wrestle her wand away from her—I couldn't disarm her with magic; Draco had my wand. Obviously my efforts were pointless, and once she had recovered from the shock of me having launched myself at her, she grabbed my by the shoulders and threw away from her and onto the floor."

Narcissa said all of this in three breaths at the most. It had been difficult to understand because she was speaking through sobs.

I noticed that she had stopped wringing her hands together and was now digging her finger nails into her palm.

"Once she had finished telling me how disgusted she was with me, and saying that I was worthless like Lucius, she, she raised her wand and she-she did _it_ before I could try to stop her again. It only lasted a second, but it keeps replaying in my mind and I just wish that I could have done something more to—"

She broke off, so overtaken by her sobs that she was unable to speak. I noticed that she had dug her nails so deeply into her palms that they had drawn blood.

I wordlessly handed her a handkerchief. It took her a couple of minutes to steady herself.

"And I-I came here today so I could tell you how sorry I am that I couldn't save her for you Andy. I'm so sorry."

I stared at her. Just stared. I was having trouble fully comprehending everything she had said to me, so I took it one thing at a time.

"You-you tried to save Dora?"

My voice came out as a croak, and I was surprised to feel the ghost of a tear in the corner of my eye.

She nodded wordlessly.

I considered her once more, and then after another long silence, I spoke again.

"Thank you, Cissy," I said quietly, addressing her with the petname I hadn't used in more than half a lifetime.

She looked up, and smiled slightly at my use of that name.

She ran the handkerchief down her face, patted at her eyes, and quickly wiped the blood from and healed the wounds she had inflicted on her palm.

She met my eyes again, and then seemed to become enveloped in a cloud of awkwardness.

She hastily cleaned the handkerchief with her wand, thrust it into my hands, and straightened herself up.

"Well, I should be going then, its getting late," she said briskly, reverting to her usual demeanor.

"Yes," I murmured in agreement.

She turned to leave, took a few steps, and then turned back to me.

"I'll be in touch," she said in a veiled request.

"Yes," I answered her with a slight smile.

She returned the smile, gave me a brief nod, and then left.

I watched her leave, and then took in my surroundings; everyone seemed to have left except for Molly Weasley, who had obviously observed the confrontation between Narcissa and I and was hoping for details.

I walked up to her and gestured towards the house with a nod of my head. We walked inside together, and she took a seat on the sofa as I went upstairs to relieve my mother-in-law of Teddy, who seemed to be feeling much better.

I kissed my mother-in-law goodbye as she left, and then returned to the sitting room; Molly had made us tea in my absence.

I took a sip and sat down next to her, readying myself for what promised to be a very long conversation.


	6. Draco

_First of all, I'm sorry about the waits between chapters. I know how annoying it can be, but there's this little thing called college that keeps me from updating as quickly as I would like to. _

_**This chapter is now edited in accordance to the most recent information from JKR; namely that Draco marries Astoria Greengrass and not some random Durmstrang girl.**_

_Be warned: there is some mild swearing in this chapter, so if mild swearing offends you in any way….you have been warned._

**Chapter Six: Draco**

To be completely honest with myself, the prospect of rekindling whatever Narcissa and I had had all those years ago was an incredibly attractive one. It wasn't that I missed her; it was more like I missed the part of my life that I associated with her. Nearly all of the people I had grown close to in the first quarter century of my life were dead and gone, and she, and maybe one or two others, were all I had left of that part of my life.

I knew that we could never go back to the relationship we had once had, and I was fine with that. Even when had been close, it was an odd kind of close. Bella was four years older than Narcissa, and often babied Narcissa as a result of that age difference.

Now Bella and I, although we were two years apart, couldn't have had a more different relationship; we were more best friends than we were sisters. Everything I knew, I knew from her; she even gave me my first sex talk when I was about thirteen years old (how a fifteen-year-old girl knew some of the things she did I'll never know, and to be honest, I really don't want to know).

Bella regarded me as her best friend, her equal. She confided everything to me, and trusted me beyond anyone else. I regarded her in the same manner until I was fourteen and fifteen, when I realized that perhaps it would be best to pull back from her for a time.

Although Narcissa was only two years younger than me, I chose to follow Bella's lead in my behavior towards her. Narcissa and I had been close, very close, closer than most sisters, but we never had the kind of relationship that Bella and I had.

When we were younger, I never really thought that Narcissa noticed the differences between the relationships Bella and I had with each other and the ones we had with her. But looking back, I realize that she may have noticed a lot more than she let on.

She had always longed for the spotlight, and popularity, and admiration. Bella and I gave her none of these things.

Those yearnings were probably most of what attracted her to Lucius; he could give her everything Bella and I couldn't, or wouldn't.

Neither Bella nor I liked Lucius. He and I had been constantly thrown together in our youth—our families were of similar social standing so we spent rather a lot of time together as children, and we were in the same and house year at Hogwarts, and prefects to boot.

Lucius believed that he and I were friends. We weren't; I was more friends with Rabastan Lestrange than I was with Lucius. However, Lucius somehow got the idea into his head that the three of us were a bit of a clique, that, and he had a bit of a crush on me.

I never liked him, I objected to his self-satisfied manner, his name dropping, his overly slick way of addressing me, and what I correctly identified as no small amount of cowardice. I never told him off, though. I had trouble being overtly nasty to people in my youth; I had a tendency towards passive aggression, I still do, in fact.

Bella didn't like him for the same reasons I didn't: he was slippery and a coward.

However, we both overcame our negative feelings for Lucius and supported the relationship. No matter what Bella and I wanted for our own lives, we agreed that we wanted Narcissa to stay as far out of the war as possible. We didn't want that kind of danger for our baby sister. We believed that Lucius would protect her and keep her safe.

He failed miserably at this, of course. You never could depend on Lucius for anything.

I often feel guilty for his failure and what happened to their family, even though what had happened to mine was ten times worse. But then, I often feel guilty for things that I had no control over, so this was nothing new.

All of these emotions—the guilt that I shouldn't have felt, the yearnings for things I knew I could never get back, and the regret for events I had no part in—were swirling through my head as I re-read the letter Narcissa had sent me for what must have been the three hundredth time.

The talk we had had at the funeral still did not seem as if it was entirely real. It was hard to believe that it had actually happened, yet there was a piece of proof right in my hand.

She wanted to see me, to "talk" with me. I wasn't sure if I was ready to "talk" with her. The part of me which associated her with my past wanted very much to see her, but the rest of me was much more hesitant. What if she said something that I wasn't ready to hear? What if seeing her husband and son alive and well was too much for me?

I looked at the letter one last time. I didn't really need to read it again; I had read it so many times that it was committed to my memory. But, I just felt the need to hold the paper and see the writing once more.

_Andromeda,_

_I've been meaning to write to you since your daughter's funeral, but this is the _

_first time I have been able to get my thoughts together._

_I would like to speak with you. I realize that you may still be very angry, but if you could just spare some of your time, it would be very much appreciated._

_Please owl me back with your reply, I hope you will say yes._

_Your Sister,_

Narcissa Malfoy

It was amazing how much a short, five lined letter could annoy me. The way she referred to it as "your daughter's funeral" irritated the hell out of me; she seemed to have forgotten that it was also the funeral of her cousin and brother-in-law; the placating tone of the second paragraph which implied that I had no need to feel angry; the way that—even in reaching out—she still managed to make it all about her; it all made me want to scream in frustration and tear the letter up and throw it into the fire.

It was a little, five-lined piece of annoyance, but a piece of annoyance that I couldn't tear myself away from.

I wanted very much to put off responding indefinitely, but I knew I couldn't do that, I knew that I would have to deal with Narcissa eventually.

I sighed, picked up my quill, and embraced the inevitable.

_Narcissa,_

_Yes, I suppose we can set up a meeting._

_Tomorrow around three o'clock in the afternoon would be the most convenient for me. If this time works for you, which I am assuming that it will, I will be outside your home at three._

_Regards,_

_Andromeda_

I decided to drive to her home instead of apparating. Ted had taught me how to drive when we were younger, and I had always been rather proud of the fact that I was one of the few members of the magical community who knew how to drive. Plus, I was rather looking forward to witnessing the shock my car was likely to inspire in Lucius and Narcissa.

Teddy went with me, of course. Harry was continuously offering to take him off of my hands for a day (with Ron, Hermione, and Ginny nodding enthusiastically behind him), but I still hadn't reached the point where I was willing to let him out of my sight for more than ten minutes at a time.

I made it to the Malfoy's home in a little less than fifteen minutes (I didn't actually drive all the way there; I was much more covert with my magical enhancements to my car than Arthur Weasley had been with the enhancements to his) it was just as showy and ostentatious as I remembered.

Who the hell had peacocks in their garden? _Peacocks?_ Obviously Lucius' tastes were just as ridiculous and obnoxious as usual. Some things never change, unfortunately.

Muttering vaguely to myself about peacocks, I slid out of my car and leaned against it as Narcissa hurried down the walk towards me. I rather amused by the rapidity of her reaction to my presence; she must have been watching out the window for me.

I bit back a laugh at the thought of her pressing her face against a window in eager anticipation of my arrival, and concentrated instead on watching her approach the end of the walk. Behind her were to other blonde figures, neither of them looking overly eager to get to catch up to her.

When she finally reached me (the walk from her home to the gate, outside of which I was parked, was obscenely, not to mention pointlessly, long) she opened her mouth in greeting but then she blinked suprisedly as she looked over my shoulder, the greeting obviously forgotten.

"Is that a car?" she asked incredulously.

I raised my eyebrows at her.

"No, Narcissa, it's a broomstick."

She wasn't deterred by my sarcasm.

"You drive?"

"Apparently."

"Since when have you been able to drive?"

"Since I was about sixteen years old."

She opened her mouth, and then closed it, obviously unsure of how to respond to this piece of information.

Her husband and son had caught up to us during this exchange. I felt my face curl itself into what Ted always referred to as my "pureblood look of contempt" as my eyes set on Lucius.

"Lucius," I said in the most condescending, sneering voice I could muster. I let my eyes look him up and down, "you seem to be doing…well," I finished in a voice that clearly meant the opposite.

He opened his mouth in rebuttal, obviously hoping to come back with some witty, devastating remark. I didn't give him an opening; almost immediately after I "greeted" Lucius, I addressed Narcissa.

"I assume that this is your son?" I asked, my eyes on Draco.

"Yes, yes this is Draco," she said, obviously thrilled at the shift in the conversation. She walked over behind him and put her hands proudly on his shoulders.

Draco seemed to be taking great pains to avoid meeting my eyes. He was standing awfully stiffly, almost as if he was afraid of me.

"He looks pale."

"Well the war was quite hard on him, Andromeda."

"_Hard on him,_ Narcissa? I was under the impression that your son spent most of the year hiding in your home or safe at Hogwarts."

She turned a nasty shade of pink and glared at me. I gave her a bored look. Narcissa had another thing coming to her if she truly thought that any look of hers could intimidate me.

"The war was hard on all of us. You have no idea what kind of things he made Draco do, the things he did to us."

"How sad. Well, that's what you get for letting Death Eaters use your home as a clubhouse," I told her as I inspected my nails.

"We didn't let—" she began angrily, but Lucius cut her off.

"—If Bellatrix hadn't—" he started, before I cut him off.

"Oh dear, we're not going to play the poor-me-Bellatrix-ruined-my-life-and-traumatized-my-child game are we?-because if we are I could easily beat both of you," they both looked deeply annoyed by my rejection of their self-pity.

"Listen," I said with a sigh, "if your kid got screwed up by the presence of Death Eaters in your home you should blame yourselves, not Bella; you should both know that everything Bella touches turns to shit," I concluded, slightly shocked by the bitterness in my voice.

"Well Narcissa, are we going to 'talk' or not?"

"Right, of course," she looked into the car and saw Teddy sleeping in there. "Is that your grandson?" she asked.

I sighed to myself.

"No, Narcissa, that's just some random baby I picked up off the side of the road."

She looked rather confused.

"Yes Narcissa, of course that's my grandson. Honestly, what a ridiculous thing to ask."

She had the good grace to look slightly ashamed of herself.

I looked back over at her husband and son. Lucius was covertly attempting to peer into the car, and Draco was still desperately seeking to avoid making eye contact with me.

"Well, are we going or not? I can't stand here all day, Narcissa."

She gave a quick nod and walked around to the opposite side of the car. She obviously had no idea of what to do next.

Before I assisted her with the difficult task of opening the door and buckling her seat belt I turned back to her family.

"Well, Lucius, it has been just _lovely_ to see you again. Really." I said with a genteel sneer. "And Draco, look, I'm sorry about these two," I said as I jerked my head towards his parents, "I'm sure they didn't intentionally screw things up, but they're-they're just incompetent like that; I'm fairly certain that they mean well, though."

I walked around to the passenger side of the car, instructed Narcissa upon how to buckle her seat belt (a feat which she managed after much fumbling), walked back over to the driver's side, and got in.

She stared down at her hands for a moment as I put the key into the ignition.

"Andromeda?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yes?" I responded, mid key turn.

"What was the last conversation we had before you were disowned?"

I sincerely hoped that she wasn't about to have some kind of breakdown.

"Do you mean before that night at the dinner party or before I actually married Ted at the end of that year?"

"Well, we didn't say more than two words to each other after that night, so—"

"—So, the night of the dinner party; I think I was putting your hair up while you swooned over Lucius."

"Oh, I see."

"Why do you ask?" I inquired as I turned the key.

"I-I was just wondering."

"I see." I watched her warily; I anticipated that an emotional outburst was imminent.

"You know, I remember the day, well, the morning after you ran off with-erm-_married_ him perfectly. At breakfast everyone was talking about it, and we, I mean, the Slytherin table, were all in shock, we never thought that you would actually do it. I know I didn't, neither did Bella. We just thought that you were seeing him because you were angry at mother."

I leaned back against my seat, knowing that there was no point in driving off until she got her thoughts out. I hoped that she wasn't going to make a habit out of this kind of thing.

"So, everyone-all of your friends, you know, the Prewetts and them, well they were all pleased, and excited, and I, I just wanted explanations. So I walked over to the Gryffindor table where Sirius was sitting with his friends, Potter and them, and I remember that the entire Hall went silent, just watching me walk over to him. I asked him if he had known, if you had told him. He said yes, as if it should have been obvious to me, and I just got so angry, I can't describe it. I started screaming at him, I don't even know why I was screaming at him. I was just so angry, at you for leaving, at Bella for caring about you and the Dark Lord more than me, at Sirius for not caring at all, at mother and father for being so distant. And, I-I just screamed at him."

Her description of this long ago rage reminded me eerily of the one I had experienced before the funeral. I supposed that that was what happened when you're taught to repress your emotions from a very young age.

"I must have been hysterical, or something, because Dumbledore had Lucius take me to the Hospital Wing where they gave me a calming solution. I didn't have to go to classes that day; Dumbledore said it would be okay if I just wanted to go back to my room and lie down."

She tapered off. I could see a tear working its way down her face. I wondered what had made her bring that up, I had expected her to pull something like this, but I wasn't expecting to be so confused afterwards.

It made me wonder what other emotions she had kept hidden for all those years. It made me wonder who she really was. Did she even know? Had she just been hiding behind the comfortable identity of Mrs. Lucius Malfoy for all these years to avoid contemplating these things?

I wondered. I really did.

I patted her hand gently, handed her my handkerchief, and slowly drove away from her home.

I drove aimlessly down nameless back roads as we talked. Our conversation went in circles as she gave me volumes of self-pity, and I came back with stone cold reason and logic.

She would tell me just how horrible their lives had been over the past two or so years, and I would point out that they—specifically Lucius—had bought it upon themselves. She would then, of course, go on the defensive and attempt to divert me by telling me how horrible Voldemort had been to Draco. I would tell her that that was what she got for letting Bella back into her life. She would then go back to describing just how close they had all come to being killed. I would reply that they didn't die and were still remarkably alive. It took her quite a while to figure out how to respond to that one.

It had been was a thoroughly aggravating couple of hours, but by the time we returned to her home, we were in a better place than we had been before we our talk.

The sun was setting as we climbed out of the car and approached the front gate. She sighed and smiled slightly at me, the smile then became a smirk.

"I'll meet you in Diagon Alley at four o'clock tomorrow for tea," she told me in her best commanding voice.

"If it makes you happy," I responded dryly.

She smirked at me, bid me farewell, and made her way back down the walk to her home.

Narcissa had always had someone in her life who was able to dominate her weak personality and steer her in what they believed was the right direction. I suppose what I mean is that she was very used to having someone around who would tell her what to do.

When we were younger that person had been Bella, when she reached adulthood that person was Lucius, and in the past two or three years, that person had once again become Bella.

Now Bella was dead, and Lucius had lost his nerve, so I supposed that I was that person.

I walked slowly back to the car, slid in, and leaned my head against the steering wheel, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into.

After six months of tentative weekly meeting—sometimes she would come around to my home and make a show of getting to know Teddy—she invited me to dinner at her home.

That was the second time I came face to face with her son. Draco and I have never had much of a relationship to speak of. There was always a part of Draco which seemed to be hidden, or lost.

He sometimes seemed as if he was afraid of me; I attributed this to my likeness to Bella. We were always polite to each other, and Narcissa always made a great show of including me in Malfoy family doings, so we certainly came to know each other well enough.

I could tell that my new role in the Malfoy's life made Lucius very uncomfortable. I loved that he was uncomfortable; I reveled in his discomfort. I would spend entire dinners provoking him just for the amusement of witnessing his discomfort.

It was childish, I know, but it was the only way I could possibly deal with him because, to be frank, I did blame him very much for what happened to his family during the war; he was supposed to have kept Narcissa out of it, not thrust her directly into its path.

I knew that the way I dealt with Lucius made Narcissa angry, but she was too afraid of alienating me to mention it.

I also suspected that Draco rather enjoyed seeing me bully his father. We never discussed his relationship with Lucius, but I sometimes got the impression that Draco was just as angry at his father as I was.

Draco eventually married the youngest Greengrass girl. I was familiar with, if not rather indifferent to, their family. I hadn't seen any of them since marrying Ted, so I hadn't an inkling of what they thought of me. Nothing was said, so I assumed that they returned my indifference.

Despite the fact that she was from a nice pureblood family, I always suspected that Narcissa rather disliked her. However, Narcissa was always going to dislike the girl who married her son.

As I sat at their wedding a lump rose in my throat. It wasn't sentimentality so much as it was regret, and quite a bit of self pity.

Narcissa was able to give her son a real, formal wedding; the kind that I never had, and the kind that I always dreamt of giving Dora, but was never able to.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, I handed a handkerchief to my sobbing sister—an action to which I had become quite accustomed—hitched a smile back onto my face, and stood up to congratulate my newlywed nephew.


	7. Teddy

_I'm sorry for the delay in posting this chapter; I had a minor case of writer's block._

_Andy can deliver babies because I have always imagined that she chose to be a Healer after finishing Hogwarts. This has not been specifically mentioned in this fic because it hasn't really fit in anywhere. Once the war started up again in earnest, she stopped going to work because St. Mungo's, like the Ministry, was a dangerous environment for those know to have connections to the Order._

_Oh, and I knew that Bella did not kill Frank and Alice; Remus only mentioned them for dramatic affect, so there is no need to remind me of this_

_**This chapter is now edited in accordance with the information that Draco marries Astoria Greengrass.**_

**Chapter Seven: Teddy**

"Is labor always this damn painful?" Dora asked me with a wince as she leaned back against the pillows.

"Yes dear. Squeezing a small human out of a comparatively miniscule opening is bound to cause some discomfort."

"I think I understand the mechanics of childbirth by now, mum." She winced again and took a rather ragged breath. "What the hell inspired Molly to do this seven times?"

"Six, the twins were one pregnancy, and I've often wondered that myself."

She gasped sharply and clutched at her stomach, emitting a gentle cry.

"Alright Dora, give me one more push and I think we'll be done here."

She nodded, her face set. I didn't like to see my little girl in pain, but I knew she could deal with it; as an Auror she had been trained to put up with much worse than labor cramps.

It was only a week or two after receiving the news of Ted's death, so none of us had been in particularly jovial moods. I spent most of those two weeks holed up in my bedroom, not really wanting company, and Dora had spent most of that time resting in bed in anticipation of her upcoming labor while Remus spent most of his time making sure that she was comfortable.

It was around midnight a few weeks into March. I had been sleeping quite soundly when I was jarred out of my sleep by a loud knock on my bedroom door. I pulled on a robe, lurched to the door, and opened it to find a slightly panicking Remus standing there.

"Remus…What—?"

"It's Dora! She was having these cramps and they won't stop and I think that she—"

"Oh, I understand. She's going into labor."

He nodded rapidly, with a rather wild look in his eyes. I sighed to myself; Remus was going to be one of _those_, wasn't he? I've delivered a lot of babies, and men never fail to be completely and utterly freaked out by how it's done.

It amuses me how men fancy themselves to be so tough, and pride themselves on their insect killing skills and their Quidditch playing, broom fixing abilities; but then, when its time for the baby to come, they become absolutely terrified. Luckily I knew how to handle that sort of thing by now.

"Remus," I said efficiently, "I need you to get me a small tub of warm water, some cloths, and a bowl of crushed ice."

I thought that he would be pleased to have something to do, but instead he blinked at me uncomprehendingly, and swayed slightly on the spot. I sighed once more, took him by his arm, led him downstairs, and repeated my instructions, twice. After the second repetition he nodded somewhat spastically, and walked into the wall. He looked rather surprised to see the wall there, but then righted himself and managed to make it into the kitchen without sustaining any major injuries.

I suppressed a laugh at his expense, and made my way into their bedroom.

"Mum," Dora sighed with relief as she saw me, obviously nearly as freaked out as Remus by this whole going into labor thing. I gave her quick hug and gently stroked her hair off of her forehead.

"Just lie down dear; I'll take care of everything," I reassured her as I kissed her gently and helped her lay back onto the pillows behind her.

It was a fairly standard delivery; in fact, it went much more easily than most. The average delivery lasted anywhere from six hours to over a day, but Dora's only lasted for only three. However, to her, it must have seemed like an eternity.

With one last push the baby finally came out. Remus—who had been hovering rather anxiously behind me—rushed over to her and put his hands around her shoulders as she panted with exhaustion.

I carried the baby over to the small tub of warm water Remus bought in at my request, and gently cleaned him off with one of the cloths, also bought in by Remus.

I held the now clean little boy in my arms. I decided than and there that he was the second most adorable baby I had ever seen (Dora being the first), and I'm not saying that just because he's my grandson; I was utterly charmed by him.

"Erm, Andromeda?"

I was pulled out of my rapt contemplation of my newly born grandson, and looked up to see Remus and Dora watching me expectantly.

I walked back to the bed and placed him reluctantly into Dora's arms.

"A boy," Dora murmured. She and Remus were both staring at Teddy just as raptly as I had been. I knew the looks on their faces—they were the looks of utter shock and delight that all first time parents had when they realized that they had somehow created this tiny being.

I remember that when I first had Dora I was utterly mesmerized by her, of course, five minutes later this mesmerization turned to fear when I realized that I had absolutely no idea of how to raise a child, but that's beside the point.

"What shall we call him?" Dora asked Remus softly.

He considered it for a moment.

"Let's call him Ted, Teddy, after your father."

Dora stared at him for a moment, and then she smiled dreamily.

"Yes, little Teddy Lupin," she murmured as she ran a gentle hand through his hair.

She and Remus looked up at me.

"What do you think, mum?" she asked me softly.

I walked swiftly over to the bed and pulled her into a tight hug.

"Thank you Dora," I told her quietly and then looked over her shoulder, "and you Remus.

The three of us grinned rather stupidly at each other for a couple of seconds, and then Dora gasped.

"His hair just changed color!" she looked at Remus and I delightedly, and then laughed with joy. "He's a metamorphagus!"

"Are you sure of that, Dora? It could be a trick of the light," said Remus.

"Mum?" she asked.

I lifted him gently out of her arms and held him up to the light. Just as the light hit him his hair changed from a dark blonde color to a bright shade of blue.

I turned and grinned at them.

"He's a metamorphagus alright; Dora's hair was changing colors the minute she was born."

Dora was exceptionally pleased.

"I know that when he goes to his first job interviews _I'll_ let him go with whatever hair color he wants," she said with a slight smirk in my direction, obviously referring to the time we had argued over her intention to attend her interview for admission into the Auror training program with long, lime green hair.

I looked over her shoulders and raised my eyebrows imploringly at Remus. He shook his head fervently and made a rapid cutting sort of gesture with his hands as if to say "don't worry; I'll won't let it happen." I grinned at him and then turned back to Dora.

"Whatever you want dear."

She scowled slightly, obviously rather annoyed by my refusal to take the bait, and pulled Teddy back into her arms. She turned back to Remus.

"Do you think he ought to have godparents?" she asked him.

"There's no reason why he shouldn't," he replied.

They sat with thoughtful expressions on their faces for a minute or two. Remus finally seemed to arrive at a decision.

"Harry?" he asked her.

"Seems about right," she responded with a grin.

"I'll go to Bill's and Fleur's right now and run it by him."

He kissed her quickly, promised that he wouldn't be gone long, and disapparated. Once he was gone I slid onto the bed beside Dora. She leaned against me and let one of her hands play gently through Teddy's hair.

"I love you mum," she murmured to me before falling asleep.

The next two and a half months were the happiest we had had in quite a long time. It seemed that, during this time, everything might turn out fine for us. Ted was gone, and I had to come to terms with that, but beside the unfortunate reality of his gaping absence, we were happy. Dora and Remus were adapting quite well to parenthood, and I just loved having the three of them around—I don't know how I could have functioned with an empty house.

However, as those wonderful two and a half months came to an end, we received word through the communication system put in place by the Order that fighters were mobilizing at Hogwarts for an expected attack on it by Voldemort's full forces.

Remus and Dora had a brief argument before he left; she wanted to go along and fight with him, and he, like me, knew that it wasn't safe for her to go with Bellatrix there. Of course, she was offended by the implication that she couldn't take Bella if she had to, but Remus finally managed to convince her to stay with me and Teddy.

"Dora, listen, I do not doubt your abilities as an Auror, but the fact of the matter is that people who Bellatrix want dead don't tend to stay alive for a very long time. You're a wonderful Auror, but then, so were Frank and Alice Longbottom."

Here he paused momentarily to see if he had gotten through to her. Deciding that he hadn't, he continued on.

"If you go there is a very strong chance that you will not survive, if I go, there is also a chance that I will not survive, but I have the benefit of not having a crazy woman on the hunt for me. If we both go, there is a chance that neither of us will make it, and I would much prefer not to orphan our son."

She scowled at him defiantly, but then, after a moment or two of thought, sighed in defeat.

"I know you're right," she admitted reluctantly.

He nodded, gave me a brief hug, and motioned Dora towards the door. She followed him outside; obviously they weren't comfortable saying—well "expressing" may be the better word here—their goodbyes in front of me. I was actually perfectly fine with that, since, even though they had been married for nearly a year, I was still having trouble dealing with the fact that my son-in-law was only four years younger than me.

Once he was gone, Dora settled on the opposite end of the sofa from me. We stared at the fire and listened to the minutes tick by on the kitchen clock as we waited for news, any news, of the proceedings at Hogwarts.

After an hour of this, during which Dora became increasingly restless, she sprang up from the sofa and swung a cloak over her shoulders.

"Dora, what are you doing?"

"I have to go mum."

"What?"

"I have to go after Remus. What if something happens to him?-I need to be there."

"No Dora, the two of you expressly agreed that he would go and you would stay with Teddy."

She turned to look at me, her eyes were huge and scared, and her fingers shook as she fumbled at the fastenings.

"I have to go. He's my husband, I can't just let him run off to battle and sit here twiddling my thumbs while something terrible could be happening to him. Please, mum, try to understand," she whispered.

"I do understand, believe me, I understand more than you can ever know. But what you need to understand is that you are a mother, and your responsibility to your child trumps your responsibility to your husband, no matter how much that hurts."

"I know that you're afraid of what might happen if that Bellatrix catches me on unawares, and to be honest, so am I. But if something was to happen to Remus, and I wasn't there with him, I would never be able to forgive myself."

I knew that there was nothing I could say that would keep her from going, so I nodded, and pulled her into a tight hug, hoping for all the world that if I hugged her tightly enough she wouldn't be able to leave. After about a minute, she reached back and gently disentangled my arms from around her.

She smiled sadly at me, and gave Teddy a kiss goodbye.

"Be good for grandma, Teddy," she whispered. She looked at him intently as if hoping to burn his image into her mind, and then put him gently into my arms.

She was out the door before either of us could say another word to each other, and as I watched the door swing closed behind her, I knew that she would never open that door again.

As I sat down and attempted to fight off the lump I could feel rising in my throat, I felt a gentle tug at my hair. I looked down in surprise to see that Teddy had wrapped a fat little fist around a few strands of my hair, and was now happily gurgling as he tugged at them. I gently disentangled my hair from his hand and held him tightly against me.

"Looks like it's just you and me kid," I murmured as I felt his tiny fist close once more around a few strands of my hair.

When Dora was born, I was terrified by the prospect of raising a child. When Dora was killed, I was terrified by the prospect of raising Teddy alone. If there was anything that I felt less prepared for than raising a child by myself, it was raising a boy by myself; I knew absolutely nothing about boys other than that they love Quidditch and talking about broomstick models.

Luckily for me, Teddy was one of those children who seemed to have been born well-behaved. He was quiet and very well behaved in public. His toddler-hood was just as easy, he threw a grand total of two tantrums during this period, and neither of those lasted longer than five minutes. Usually when he wanted something he would simply tug on my skirt and give me a one word description of whatever it was that he wanted.

He was a wonderful little boy. Other little boys acted like little hellions; running around screaming while their young parents sighed over how well-behaved their little six year-old little monsters were. Teddy was not only well-behaved, but he also seemed to be highly disapproving of that sort of child.

I, of course, was not the only adult figure in Teddy's life; he absolutely adored Harry. This was a bit of a struggle for me; I trusted Harry very much and quite liked him, but it was difficult for me to let Teddy out of my sight.

However, my main fear about raising Teddy was not that I would screw him up, but it was the anticipation of the questions I knew that I would have to answer.

When Dora was small I had no idea how to answer her when she asked me why she only seemed to have one pair of grandparents. I didn't even tell her about Bellatrix and Narcissa until she was seven, and I would have liked to have waited even longer.

I was running errands in Diagon Alley with Dora, when all of the sudden Narcissa came into my line of vision. She was by herself, and when she saw us she stopped short and stared. I stared back, neither of us knowing what to do. Narcissa solved the issue by gathering herself to her full height, and assuming the expression that Ted always referred to as the "stick up the arse pureblood glare" and strode past us without a word.

Dora was a smart little girl, and she realized that something important had just happened. However, she didn't bring it up until later that night at the dinner table.

"Mummy, who was that lady we saw in Diagon Alley? She looked like you."

I paused, fork halfway to my mouth, and looked up at Ted. I knew that Ted did not approve of the fact that I hadn't told Dora about my family. Ted met my eyes and gave a rather blank sort of look that clearly told me that he was not going to help me out of this one.

I put my fork and knife down onto my plate, threaded my fingers together, and placed my hands on the table.

"Well, Dora, that was my sister."

"You have a sister?" she asked me, genuinely shocked.

"Erm, yes, I actually have two sisters."

"Why don't we ever see them?"

We were around Ted's siblings rather a lot, and Dora was very fond of them, so the idea that she had two aunts whom she had never met must have been an odd one for her.

"Well Dora," I began hesitantly, looking imploringly at Ted; he shot me the same blank sort of look and took a bite of his chicken, "my sisters are very angry with me and don't want to talk to me."

She chewed seriously, obviously giving this piece of information some serious thought.

"What about your mummy and daddy?-Are they angry with you too?"

"Yes. Very angry."

"Why?"

"Because they don't like daddy."

"How could anyone not like daddy?"

"I don't know, dear."

"That's silly," she scoffed.

"Yes, Dora I know."

Luckily for me, Dora became tired of that particular line of conversation, and began to tell Ted a very in depth story about a puffskein she had seen in Diagon Alley.

I knew that I couldn't do that with Teddy. I knew I couldn't keep it from him. With Teddy I had the advantage of being on speaking terms with Narcissa, which made the inevitable explanation of my family a bit less difficult. It was the questions about why he had no parents that I truly dreaded.

He knew that they were dead of course, although I wasn't entirely sure that he understood the full implications of the word "dead," it was a difficult concept for young children to wrap their heads around. I knew that Harry had told him a bit, but they never got very in depth. We finally discussed it when he was about five.

"Granny," he began "why are my mummy and daddy dead? Harry said that they died in the war."

"Well, yes, Harry was right; they did die in the war."

"But why?"

This was the hard part. How do you explain to a five year-old that his mother died simply because one woman wanted her dead? How do you explain a war to a five year-old? I decided that I wouldn't go into Bella or the whole pure-blood issue right now; I'd explain that to him when he was a bit older.

"Because, bad people wanted to take over, and people like your parents, and Harry, didn't want that to happen. They were killed trying to keep the bad guys from winning."

"Harry said that his mummy, daddy and godfather are dead too."

"Yes, they died fighting the same people."

Teddy nodded seriously and went back to his soup. After contemplating this piece of information for a couple of minutes, he completely changed the subject and began discussing with me the merits of having a kneazle around the house.

When the time came that it was appropriate to discuss the war, and my family with Teddy on a little more of an in-depth basis, he already had a general idea of what my family was like. This was mostly due to Narcissa's quest to reclaim our sisterhood. As a further result of this, Teddy was exposed to the Malfoys rather a lot, and astoundingly, he was quite fond of them.

He would become genuinely excited when he knew that "Aunty Cissy" was coming by—something which made Harry rather uncomfortable despite his knowledge that Narcissa mostly harmless. Teddy didn't like Lucius, and whenever he was around Lucius he would always ask me why Aunty Cissy's husband was so mean. I told him that Lucius had always been like that, and advised him to ignore it. Lucius was too afraid of me to be outright nasty to Teddy, but Teddy was a very perceptive little boy and picked up on Lucius' hostility quite easily.

Teddy was never overly close to Draco. Draco always seemed as if he was very closed off, very unwilling to get close to people. He certainly seemed fond of me and Teddy, but that was as far as it went.

Draco's wife, Astoria, was never as vehement about pureblood distinctions as her in-laws were. She obviously put some sort of importance on the fact that she was a pureblood, and never would have considered marrying a non-pureblood, but this never extended to her perception of Teddy and I.

In fact, she was quite fond of Teddy; she thought that he was utterly adorable and always had a little present waiting for him. I quite liked Astoria, but then, I was fond of nearly anyone who was fond of Teddy.

However, of his Malfoy side of the family, Teddy's favorites were "Aunty Cissy," and Draco's son Scorpius. Scorpius too seemed to adore Teddy. That wasn't much of a surprise. Children of about Scorpius' age seemed to universally adore Teddy. Molly had Teddy and I around quite frequently, and all of her grandchildren seemed to be just as crazy about Teddy as Scorpius was.

Harry's children were particularly fond of him. When Teddy first realized that Harry was going to have children of his own he became very upset. He knew that, if Harry had children of his own, those children would always cone before him in Harry's affections.

When Teddy's despair reached the one week mark, I explained what he was feeling to Harry, who immediately put down what he was doing and came back with me to speak with Teddy. He sat down with Teddy (who had been sulking in his bedroom), and told him that the fact that he had his own children in no way meant that he cared for Teddy any less.

Ginny, who was also very upset when she heard how Teddy was feeling, came by when Harry left to reiterate that no matter how many children she and Harry had together, Teddy would always be a part of their family.

Harry and Ginny spent the next couple of days with Teddy, and when Ginny went into labor Harry took Teddy along with him to the hospital in order to firmly drive home the point that Teddy was a permanent member of their family.

They had Teddy was present at the births of all of their children; he was even allowed to hold them and help out with the naming process. I knew that if the dead had any way of monitoring the actions of the living, James, Remus, and Sirius would all be exceptionally pleased by this.

James, Albus, and Lily grew to regard Teddy as a kind of older brother, and whenever we visited the Potters we were greeted by shrieks of: "Mummy, Daddy, Teddy's here!" They would then proceed to launch themselves at him.

Ron and Hermione's children were nearly as fond of him as Harry's, and the rest of Molly's grandchildren all regarded Teddy as a bonafide member of the family.

The only snag in all of this was the animosity between the Weasleys and the Malfoys. The Potter-Weasley clans were all rather disturbed by how close Teddy was to the Malfoys, and an unpleasant silence would always fill the room whenever Teddy mentioned any of the Potters or Weasleys around the Malfoys. Luckily, Teddy was always amused by this animosity, and never paid much attention to it.

His childhood went by so easily, and so happily, that it seemed like no time at all had passed before his Hogwarts letter arrived.

I admit that I was a bit of a wreck. I didn't want my little Teddy to go to school, and have to deal with people, and teachers without me. While I didn't doubt Teddy's people skills, I absolutely hated that he would be out of my sight for months at a time.

Harry came with us to King's Cross, of course, and Teddy spent most of the car ride there talking to Harry at a mile a minute about Quidditch, classes, Houses, and everything that a first-year could possibly want to know. When the train finally pulled up he was nearly bursting with excitement.

Teddy boarded the train, and Harry and I watched together as it sped away into the distance. Harry was grinning proudly and I was fighting my initial reaction of bursting into tears. Harry noticed my slight distress—by now, after we had practically raised an eleven year-old child together, he was able to read my emotions quite well—and struck up a conversation in an attempt to avert my thoughts from their current state of distress.

"So what House do you reckon he'll be in?"

"Ravenclaw," I said without having to give it even a moment of thought. His entire family was a very Ravenclaw one. Ted had been in Ravenclaw, I had nearly been put into Ravenclaw, but was put into Slytherin after begging the Sorting Hat, Remus had always teetered on the Ravenclaw edge of Gryffindor, and Dora told me that the hat had considered making her a Ravenclaw before finally landing on Hufflepuff.

Harry considered it for a moment.

"Yeah, seems about right," he agreed. We smiled at each other. "Care to grab some lunch?"

"That sounds lovely, dear." We walked together back to the car, and I drove us down to the Leaky Cauldron.

Despite my tendency towards over-protection, despite my worry, and despite the fact that I wouldn't be seeing Teddy until December, I knew that everything would be alright.


	8. Victoire

_To my reviewers: first of all, you're all wonderful, second of all, don't worry there's still quite a bit more of this story to go; we're only a little bit more than halfway through, and yes, I fully intend to finish it; I even have the last chapter written. Additionally, sometime between chapter 7 and now I wrote two oneshots, so check them out! pimps self_

_Sorry if there are any typos. It's quite late…_

**Chapter Eight: Victoire**

"Come on, Teddy, you eat this stuff every day."

"No!" He crossed his pudgy, two year old arms and jutted out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.

I wasn't intimidated. If he didn't want to eat his food he could just sit there until he was ready to eat. I could sit there all day.

I had just engaged myself into a fairly serious staring match with Teddy when there was a knock on the door.

"We're not done here," I told Teddy as I stood up to answer the door, just in case he'd thought that he won.

It was Molly at the door. A rather breathless Molly. That could only mean one thing.

"Ah, so Fleur had an easy delivery then?"

She deflated, looking rather annoyed that I had robbed her of what would have been her dramatic announcement.

"Yes," she said sullenly. I could tell that she wanted to remain annoyed with me for daring to rob her of her big moment, but I suppose that her newfound glee at being a grandmother overcame whatever annoyance she may have had.

"It's a girl," she exclaimed, "they decided to call her Victoire. Oh, Andromeda, she's absolutely gorgeous," she said so quickly that I could barely figure out what she had said.

"Of course she's gorgeous, isn't she one eighth veela?"

"Well, yes, but she would have been gorgeous anyway."

"Of course she would, Molly."

It was hard to believe that Bill was a father. That day when Fabian had burst into Marlene's bedroom and dragged us down to St. Mungo's for the advent of Bill's birth didn't seem like it was all that long ago.

"I can't believe that little Billy is a father. It seems like just yesterday that Fabian was dragging me down to St. Mungo's to see him being born."

"Oh, yes, I remember that. I was so surprised to see you there."

"Yeah, you hated me."

"Don't be silly; I never hated you," she said in an overly casual sort of voice.

I could tell that she was lying. Apparently she too realized how false shed had sounded, so she slipped out her stack of pictures and shoved them into my lap in order to distract me.

That stack of pictures took up the rest of the afternoon.

In lieu of this event, I let Teddy win our battle of wills, and bought him into the sitting room with me. He seemed exceptionally bored by the pictures, and spent most of the afternoon playing with our young kneazle, Greeny (I have no idea what prompted Teddy to call him "Greeny," as Greeny was marmalade in color).

I suppose you could say that I watched Victoire grow up. It wasn't a concerted effort on my part, but once Molly decided that Teddy and I were part of her clan it was quite difficult not to be continuously updated on the doings of her children.

Victoire latched onto Teddy at a rather young age. She was the eldest of Molly's grandchildren, and Teddy was always at Weasley family gatherings, so they, as children in an environment filled with children younger than them tended to do, gravitated towards each other.

They formed an easy sort of friendship, despite the fact that Teddy was two years older than her—a fact which he rather enjoyed holding over her head as they became older.

I was always rather touched by their friendship; it reminded me of how much time Dora had spent with Charlie and Bill when they were the same age as Teddy and Victoire.

She was a sweet girl. She was vibrant, and energetic, and engaging, while, at the same time shy, and slightly unsure of herself. It was an interesting combination.

She was also absolutely adorable. It obviously would have been impossible for Bill and Fleur to have an ugly child, and Victoire proof of this.

Her hair wasn't quite as straight and silvery as her mother's; instead it was an exceedingly light shade of strawberry blonde (more blonde than strawberry) with a slight wave to it, and she had her parents' light blue eyes.

She and Teddy remained close over their years of growing up. When Teddy was around six or seven he entered a stage where he would hold his more advanced age over Victoire's head, although, I could tell that he was more amused by her reaction to the teasing than he was by the act of teasing her.

When he turned ten he became rather indifferent towards her. As far as he was concerned, he would be starting Hogwarts in a year, and was thus nearly an adult; adults to not spend time with eight year olds.

This annoyed Victoire to no end, and she resorted to hurling mockery in order to goad him into shedding his newfound pretension and fight back. She was successful, and after that he dropped the adult act.

She cried when he started Hogwarts; he was really one of her only companions. Her sister, Dominique, was three years younger than her, and her brother Louis was two years younger than Dominique. All of her Weasley cousins were quite younger than herself as well.

She was afraid that he would forget about her and have other, better, older friends that he would rather spend time with over the holidays. He assured her that he wouldn't forget her, and that he would write a letter every week, but I'm not sure that she believed him.

He did change quite a bit in the first year he was away; when he came back for the Christmas holidays seemed older, more responsible, and more mature somehow. Victoire sensed this about him, and in turn became rather uncomfortable in his presence.

Before this they had been able to sink easily into discussion of whatever non-sensical subject struck their fancy. But now, after three months of school, he seemed to have grown out of this and was much more interested in discussing his lessons with Percy than he was in giggling with a nine-year old girl.

She went from uncomfortable to shy, and they lost the easy comradery of their childhood.

Before I knew it, Teddy was entering his second year of school. He steadily became more and more absorbed with class work and friends, and Victoire continued to feel as if she was growing farther and farther apart from him. He was growing up while she remained a child, and she wasn't at all pleased with that.

The time finally came when Victoire turned eleven and was ready to begin school. Of course, Molly had a veritable fit over the fact that her eldest grandchild was starting school; there was much crying and carrying on of the sort that drove me absolutely mad.

When Teddy and I arrived at King's Cross, we found Fleur and Victoire engaged in the usual sort of thing. Fleur fussed and became quite emotional while Bill rolled his eyes at Fleur and Dominique and Louis made Victoire promise to write to her everyday.

Victoire tolerated this, as most first years did, but was exceedingly relieved when her mother released her from her arms.

By this time Teddy was entering his third year, and in terms of adolescence, her was years ahead of her.

After releasing Victoire, Fleur turned to Teddy rather anxiously.

"Teddy, you will keep an eye on Victoire, won't you? I'm quite worried about her."

Victoire looked positively mortified. Teddy didn't notice.

"Of course I will, Fleur," he said shooting a brotherly sort of smile at Victoire, "I won't let her get into any trouble and I'll help her out with her work if she needs any."

"Your grandson is wonderful," Fleur said, shooting me a relieved smile.

"Yes, I'm quite fond of him, myself," I responded with a dry smile.

This scene filled me with an almost heart-breaking nostalgia; all I could think of was the day Dora began school, how I had fussed over her the same way Fleur was now fussing over Victoire, and how I had begged Bill to keep an eye out for Dora the same why Fleur was begging Teddy to keep an eye out for Victoire.

"Mum," Victoire protested "I don't need someone to look after me. I can take care of myself." She said this all in a would-be authoritative manner with her arms crossed and her bottom lip jutted out in an absurd, but obviously unintentional pout.

Her little protest was more adorable than it was authoritative, and I struggled not to laugh.

"Don't worry Victoire; all parents do this sort of thing when their child starts school. It's perfectly natural, besides, and everybody else's mother is doing it too," I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.

She didn't look convinced.

"Erm, I'm pretty sure we should board the train now, Gran, it'll be leaving soon."

I sighed reluctantly. I always hated watching him get on that train and pull away from me. Usually Harry accompanied us to see Teddy off, and he helped to soften the blow, but this year Harry had a last minute emergency assignment from work, so he couldn't be with us.

Bill, who sensed my slight anguish, took it upon himself to jump in.

"Quick Teddy, before your grandmother tries to keep you from getting on the train!" he said jokingly. His face then became serious. "She did that once, you know."

"Bill! I did not."

"Yes you did. You grabbed Dora's arm and tried to convince her that she would much prefer to be schooled at home than to attend Hogwarts."

Teddy sniggered, I shot him a look and he quickly abstained, although his mouth continued to twitch suspiciously.

"Yes, in her first year of school. All mothers go mad on their children's first year of school. You're one to talk, Bill; I can only imagine the sorts of rubbish Molly pulled on your first day."

Bill cleared his throat loudly and changed the subject.

"Well, it's about time for the two of you to board the train."

Teddy grinned down at Victoire, which caused her cheeks to grow ever so slightly pink.

"C'mon Vicky, before your mum starts fussing at you again," he said as he shot a good natured grin at Fleur, who was not amused.

Teddy gave me one last hug, and boarded the train with Victoire as Fleur yelled last minute reminders and advice after them.

She looked appropriately forlorn as the train pulled away.

Victoire ended up being sorted into Ravenclaw. This pleased Fleur, since it meant that Teddy would have an even closer watch over Victoire, but I could tell that Bill was rather disappointed that she hadn't been put into Gryffindor; he never would have admitted it, but I could tell.

Victoire didn't have any trouble getting into the rhythm of life at Hogwarts. Her classes were difficult, and she got lost a time or two, but she didn't have any major problems.

I could tell that she tagged after Teddy quite a bit. He never came right out and stated it in his letters, but I had a vague notion that that was what was going on. However, Teddy was a fairly tolerant young man, and seemed to understand that she was going through an adjustment period.

Time passed, and they grew older. Victoire grew into herself, and sometime during her third year she realized that being part veela, even if it was only an eighth, was more of a curse than a blessing. She would come home over breaks and complain about how upset she was by the unwanted attention she got from some of the boys, and how uncomfortable it made her feel.

By this time Teddy and Victoire had reestablished their friendship in some manner. They weren't as close as they had been in their childhoods, that sort of thing would be impossible at this point in their lives. He continued to view her as a younger sister of sorts, and she became increasingly frustrated with his view of her.

Teddy was in his fifth year, and was very busy with prefect duties and his impending OWL exams. His fifth year was Victoire's third year, and that was the year that the disadvantages of being a part veela caught up to her.

It was nothing major, but it was enough to upset her. Two older boys, probably fourth or fifth years, decided that they approved of Victoire's physical appearance, and took to commenting making upon it whenever she passed them in the corridors.

This eventually drove her to tears, and the entire fiasco ended when Teddy told those two boys off. I never got the exact details of the tell-offing, but I know for sure that it involved a bloodied nose or two.

This resulted in two things. The first was that Teddy's head of house deducted twenty points from Ravenclaw since, although the two boys had deserved it, he had in fact broken a rather important rule; prefects were not allowed to physically assault fellow students. The second result was that Victoire began to absolutely despise the fact that Teddy viewed her as a younger sister. She proceeded to become unreasonably—from his point of view—annoyed when he began going out with a girl in his year.

Teddy, in typical boy fashion, picked up on none of this, and interpreted Victoire's actions as the typical behavior of a thirteen year old girl.

His relationship with the girl in his year ended about a month into his sixth year, and, after that, for some reason which Teddy could not entirely understand, Victoire became a whole hell of a less moody with him.

During the winter holiday of Victoire's fourth year, Bill and Fleur decided to have a night out, and did not expect to be home until well past midnight. They asked Teddy if he would be alright with "coming by and spending some time with Vicky, Dominique, and Louis while we're out."

This irritated Victoire to no end, as, in her mind, it gave him reason to continue to think of her as a child, as someone who needs a baby-sitter. However, in the midst of her irritation, I don't believe that she realized that her two siblings being only eleven and nine, respectively, at the time, did, in fact, require a babysitter.

Teddy bought some of his holiday homework along with him ("What's the hell is the point of assigning us work over, the holiday? Don't we have the damn holiday to get away from the work?"), and saw the entire event as merely some time to spend hanging around with Victoire and her siblings while getting some of her work done. Victoire, however, saw it in a completely different light.

Teddy came in around two thirty in the morning. He was surprised to see me sitting calmly on the couch, reading to myself at this late hour.

"Gran, what are you doing up at this hour?"

"Oh, I just got very interested in this book and I simply couldn't stand to put it down," I said quickly, knowing that he wasn't going to believe me.

"Erm, Gran, that book is about the mating rituals of a specific sub-species of Grecian chimeras."

"Oh, yes, so it is, dear."

He blinked.

"You just grabbed that book up off the table when you heard me open the door so you would be able to have an excuse for sitting up until nearly three in the morning to wait until I got home."

It wasn't a question.

"Don't be silly dear," I said quickly as I walked into the kitchen to make us some tea. He smirked, obviously seeing through the act, but was kind enough not to comment upon it for a second time.

I noticed that he had turned his hair a ridiculous shade of bright orange in the time it had taken to walk from the sitting room to the kitchen.

"Dear, would you please make your hair a bit less…garish?"

"That's not fair. I've seen pictures of mum; I know you let her go around with bright pink hair."

"That was different."

"How?"

"It just was."

"You just don't want to admit that I'm right," he scoffed.

I raised my eyebrow at him rather dangerously, so he wisely discontinued that particular line of conversation. He returned his hair to its usual shade of turquoise, and took a sip of his tea.

"So, how was your evening?"

"Alright, I got a lot of work done;" he paused looking rather annoyed, "Victoire was acting weird, though."

"How so?"

"I don't know, she just—she just kind of weird, and giggly, but then when I'd ask her what she was giggling about she'd get all red and excuse herself. And she kept asking me if I was interested in anyone, and she got all weird and tetchy when I said that I wasn't really into anyone at the moment. Then she kept asking me about Prissy, which was weird as I haven't even really spoken to her since we broke up in September."

"Hmm. Interesting."

"What's interesting?"

"It would seem that little Vicky has a crush on you."

"What are you on about, Gran? She's two years younger than me," he exclaimed as though the idea of a two year age difference in a romantic pairing was the equivalent of gross pedophilia.

"You do know that your father was fifteen years older than your mother, don't you?"

He pretended not to hear me.

"Vicky does not like me like that. No, that's ridiculous. She's like my little sister."

"Well, dear, the fact that you think of her as a younger sister does in no way ensure that she thinks of you as an older brother."

He scowled, informed me that I obviously had no idea what I was talking about, and went to bed.

I was right, though.

Although he refused to believe that Victoire may have had feelings for him, I noticed that his behavior towards her changed in a very subtle manner, as if to suggest that he had taken what I said a bit more seriously than he would have liked me to think.

Victoire seemed to notice the change too, and although she didn't know the cause of it, she was obviously very pleased by it.

This continued for the duration of Teddy's time at Hogwarts. Victoire's feeling for him—and her frustration at his complete lack of further regard for those feelings—continued to grow, and Teddy continued to refuse to accept that Victoire would feel that way about him.

Others had noticed, of course. Fleur once made a sly remark about how wonderful it would be if Teddy and Victoire were to begin a relationship, and Molly echoed these sentiments on a rather regular basis.

Harry noticed as well, and once mentioned it jokingly Teddy, who again seemed rather dismissive of the entire thing.

In fact, I'm sure that most of the adult Weasley clan had taken notice of it all by now, and everyone seemed to be on board with it; everyone except Teddy, that is.

Teddy left Hogwarts on a high note. He had been Head Boy, and had some of highest NEWT scores in his year. He also had a job offer from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He hoped to specialize in human-werewolf relations and improvement on the methods of integrating werewolves into society.

I was extremely proud of the line of work he had gotten into. I was also exceptionally relieved that he hadn't chosen to become an Auror—I used to joke that if he ever took more than an academic interest in Defense Against the Dark Arts I would lock him in his room. He could never tell whether or not I was being serious.

It just so happened that Bill and Fleur decided to have another late out night during the summer of Teddy's graduation. They were reluctant to leave Victoire home by herself; this time it was because they didn't want any of Victoire's (many) admirers stopping by, and they still felt that Thérèse was too young to be left by herself with only Victoire, so Teddy was once more put on hang-out duty.

Teddy came back in around three in the morning; this time he knew better than to comment upon the fact that I had waited up for him. In fact, he didn't comment on much of anything. He stumbled in and flopped into the armchair looking exceedingly disoriented, and not a little bit confused.

"What's wrong, dear?"

He looked startled at the sound of my voice, almost as though he had not registered the fact that I was in the room with him.

"Victoire kissed me."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. She said some stuff, and then she kissed me," he repeated, that dazed sort of look hadn't yet left his face.

He went to bed soon after that.

Teddy never again insisted that Victoire was like a little sister to him, and Victoire couldn't have been happier.


	9. The Wedding

_Sorry for the delay between chapters; I had writer's block…and finals. This chapter is decidedly transitional; not much happens, but some things in this chapter had to happen before we get to the good stuff. _

_To a certain reviewer (whose reviews I deeply appreciate): Please keep in mind that the way Andromeda perceives Molly is bound to be quite different from the way Harry does, and I have written her accordingly._

_And some notes: Rose and Scorpius are 14 in this chapter, making Teddy 22 and Victoire 20, I wrote I oneshot while doing this chapter that you should totally check out, and the last three chapters are edited to correspond with the latest info released by JKR on Draco's wife and the Weasley kids. _

**The Wedding**

The door slammed open and Teddy came running in, his cheeks were flushed, and he was slightly out of breath. He came skidding to a halt in the doorway of the kitchen, where I was sitting drinking tea. He grinned rather stupidly at me until I raised an eyebrow and cleared my throat. That seemed to snap him out of it.

"IaskedVictoiretomarryme!" he exclaimed.

I put down my cup of tea.

"Excuse me dear?"

"I asked Victoire to marry me."

Some would have seen this as something to be upset over—the loss of a grandson, his moving on into a new stage of his life and so on and so forth—but I was pleased. Victoire was a wonderful girl, and I was glad that my grandson was marrying Bill's daughter. (I did hope the Molly wouldn't be too much of a pain about the great-grandchildren, though. I wasn't too worried; I could take her, probably…)

I grinned at him.

"Oh, Teddy that's wonderful," I leaned over and hugged him tightly.

"Yeah, yeah," he agreed, still slightly out of breath. "It is good, right?"

"Yes dear, very good," I said as I poured him a cup of tea. "Now drink your tea."

He happily complied.

They announced their engagement two days later, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive; Harry's children were particularly enthusiastic, and Molly was pleased that Teddy (and I by extension) was now an official member of the family.

The two of them spent a couple of days basking in their engaged status, but then decided that they should probably get down to planning sooner rather than later. They obviously viewed this with process with no small amount of trepidation, and that was where I intended to step in.

I fully intended to plan their wedding. I was going to let them get to the point where they panicked at the enormity of it, and then I would sweep in before Molly or Fleur had the chance to get their hands on it.

Devious? Yes, but I am a Slytherin after all; plus I had never been able to plan a traditional wedding. Ted and I did the signing a paper thing, and Dora's wedding was too rushed for extensive planning. Teddy's wedding would be my last chance to plan a wedding for some form of my offspring, and I wasn't going to let it pass me by.

If Molly or Fleur (or both of them) put up a fight, I would offer to pay for the whole thing (I didn't miss out on the Black family money entirely, Uncle Alphard left some to me as well as to Sirius).

My plan was a success. Fleur and Molly seemed rather put out, but after I offered to cover the cost of the entire thing—and after I tearfully argued that I hadn't been able to give myself, or my daughter a traditional wedding like I had always wanted, and implored them to let me plan the wedding of my poor, orphaned grandson—they easily went along with it.

Neither of them were stupid, so they obviously saw the rather forced sentimentality of my display, however, they knew me well enough by that point to see enough of the true emotion behind that display to allow me to plan it, and to let me pay.

That's not to say that they and Victoire, wouldn't have a part in the planning, but I liked that I was the one who was giving them the wedding, so to speak.

Things went as smoothly as could be expected. Fleur and Molly butted heads a couple of times—the most notable of these being an argument over home cooked food versus catering, they came to a compromise on that one—and Bill and Arthur knew better than to interfere.

Teddy and Victoire would occasionally work up the nerve to venture a quick question, wisely understanding that they were likely to have their heads bitten off if they made an attempt to plan their own wedding. They were, however, consulted about things like color, food preferences, the wedding party, and the guest list.

It all went smoothly, as I said, until it came time to construct the guest list. The problem lay in the fact that Teddy was quite close to his Malfoy side of the family—the side of his, and my, family that the Weasley-Potter clan liked to pretend didn't exist. How inviting these people to a Weasley wedding would go over, I had absolutely no idea.

Teddy bought this up to me before discussing it with anyone else, Malfoy, Weasley, or other. It was a wise choice.

It was the night after a surprisingly involved discussion about the drinks we would serve, and we were both pretty burned out on wedding plans.

He was sitting in the chair, staring rather glassily into space, and I was on the couch reading a letter from Kingsley.

He cleared his throat.

"Erm, Gran?"

"Yes dear?"

"I was thinking about the guest list, and I think that I'd rather-I'd rather like some of the Malfoys to be there."

"I thought that you'd say that."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. In fact, I was fairly positive that it was going to come up sooner or later. I'm just glad you chose to discuss this in private, as opposed to around the Weasleys, or Harry."

He smiled at me ruefully.

"Do you think they'd have that much of a problem with it? I mean, I'm quite close with some of them and it would mean a lot to me to have them there on my wedding day. I know that they have issues with the Weasleys, but there must be some way to impress upon them how important this is to me."

"Which Malfoys are we talking about dear? All of them, or—"

"I was thinking just Scorpius and Aunt Narcissa. I wouldn't invite Lucius even if I did like him, and I don't, so it's a non-issue. As for Draco and Astoria, I'm thinking that that might not be a good idea either. I mean, I know that there are a lot of issues between Draco and Harry and all of them, and I'd rather not have to deal with those issues on my wedding day—"

"Yes, it's probably a good idea to keep Draco and Lucius firmly off the guest list. You wouldn't want any fights to break out over the wedding cake."

"I shudder at the thought," he said with a slight wince. "But Narcissa and Scorpius—"

"I think that it would be very nice and fitting to have Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Draco and Lucius will understand; they'll probably be relieved."

"Good. Now, how do we bring this up to the Weasleys?"

"Well, we explain that despite whatever negative feelings they may have towards them, the Malfoys are your family, and you have the right to have your family present on the most important day of your life. Plus I'm paying. You can subtly hint at that if all else fails."

He smirked.

"That's evil, Gran."

"Well, I was in Slytherin after all," I said as I returned his smirk. We smirked affably at each other for a minute or two, and then he bid me goodnight.

I went over the idea again after he went to bed. Of course Lucius wouldn't be invited, that went without questioning. Draco and Astoria were a bit more difficult. Teddy had never had any sort of strong bond with them, but, he was relatively fond of them, and never objected to spending time in their presence.

He had been a little less fond of Astoria of late; her grandfather, Daniel—who had been in mine and Lucius' year in Slytherin—made a subtle yet pointed remark at me over dinner, and Teddy had been distinctively cool towards the Greengrasses as a whole since then.

They would be disappointed, but I was sure that they would understand the circumstances under which they weren't being invited—I was fairly sure that Draco was in no hurry to be in the presence of the likes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and Lucius would have rathered to expose himself to the Cruciatus Curse multiple times than attend that particular wedding.

I expected that he would want Narcissa and Scorpius in attendance. Teddy had been extremely fond of Narcissa from a very young age, and that fondness had never waned. Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to form a somewhat meaningful relationship with her. She took an active interest in his life, and he reciprocated by visiting her fairly frequently and owling her nearly as frequently. In fact, when he was at Hogwarts she received nearly as many owls from him as Harry and I did.

I was pleasantly surprised by their relationship. I was touched that, after all that had gone on between us, Narcissa would make an active effort to include herself in mine and Teddy's lives.

Apologizing to me, and treating me to sob-stories about how I had been right all along, and how Voldemort had been mean to her family and so on and so forth were all very well, but her formation of a relationship with my grandson was what convinced me of the sincerity of her conciliatory actions, and it was what drove me too truly accept her apologies—after all, actions speak louder than words.

Teddy's relationship with Scorpius closely resembled the ones he had with Harry's, and most of the Weasley children; Scorpius looked up to him, idolized him to a certain extent. I knew for a fact that his grandparents—Narcissa being the exception—were rather uncomfortable with the closeness between my grandson and their grandson, but, there was nothing they could do about it so neither Teddy nor I took much notice of their discomfort.

I was, in fact, extremely fond of Scorpius. Despite the negative influence his grandparents, and possibly his parents, may have had on him, as he grew up his personality became more absolute and little Scorpius Malfoy came to remind me of none other than Sirius.

It became increasingly obvious to me that Lucius and Narcissa were very well aware of the similarities—it was obvious by the mingled guilt and annoyance which passed over their faces whenever he came out with something particularly Sirius-like.

Like Sirius, Scorpius came to resent his family. While Sirius' issues with his family had been a tad more serious than Scorpius', Scorpius resented that he had to suffer from his family's negative reputation.

Sometimes the children of families who had had particularly bad luck in the war would blame Scorpius for the crimes of past generations, and some of his fellow students formed a rather negative opinion of him based solely upon his family's reputation. This was exceedingly offensive to him as he didn't hold most of his family's past prejudices.

This was largely due to Teddy and I; if we hadn't intervened I'm sure that he still wouldn't have gone wholeheartedly along with the pureblood superiority thing—especially not after his father's experiences in the war—but Teddy and I did a rather thorough job of ensuring that this would not happen, just in case.

Yes, I thought, bringing myself back to my original train of thought, they would be pleased by their invitations to the wedding, but the real question was how the Weasleys would respond. I doubted that they would be excessively pleased by it.

I was fairly sure that they wouldn't take issue with Scorpius; he was in the same year as Rose and Albus, and had had some how managed to form a somewhat easy friendship with them despite the fact that he was in Slytherin and they were in Gryffindor, and despite the fact that their families rather disliked each other. Because of those friendships, the Weasleys would probably be alright—though not enthusiastic—with Scorpius' presence.

Narcissa, however, Narcissa would be a whole different story. Molly absolutely despised Narcissa, and Narcissa wholeheartedly returned those sentiments. Narcissa never explicitly stated the reason for these feelings, but I knew they had to do with the fact that it was Molly who killed Bellatrix.

Arthur wasn't fond of Narcissa by any stretch of the imagination, but his real derision was towards Lucius, not Narcissa. I was fairly sure that none of the other Weasleys would be overly pleased by Narcissa's presence, but she was intelligent enough to avoid doing or saying anything overly offensive, so I wasn't too nervous.

It went just as I expected; Molly and Fleur grudgingly agreed to invite Scorpius, and even more grudgingly agreed to invite Narcissa (Molly was more grudging than Fleur). They both knew how much Teddy wanted them there, so they agreed for his sake; I only had to mention the fact that I was paying for the event once.

Scorpius and Narcissa were both pleased with the invitation, and Draco and Lucius weren't at all angry that they had not been invited, in fact, I feel quite comfortable in saying that they were both extremely relieved.

Narcissa did inquire as to the other guest's comfort with her presence, but I assured her that they would be fine with it as long as she kept to herself. Scorpius was excited, but his didn't see his invite as anything out of the ordinary, or unexpected; he had never expected not to be invited to Teddy's wedding.

Things smoothed themselves out again after we had dealt with that.

The usually dramatic process of selecting a wedding party went quite easily. Victoire chose her sister, Dominique to be her Maid of Honor, and her Aunt Gabrielle (who was childless), and her cousins Lily, and Rose to be Bridesmaids. She passed over Molly, Lucy, and Roxanne because she thought that it would be cute to have the two youngest and the two oldest Weasley girls in her wedding. They weren't offended; it was a very accepting sort of family.

Teddy's selection was much simpler; he chose Harry as his Best Man, and James and Albus as Groomsmen. After giving it some thought, he decided to include Scorpius in their number. Since, according to Teddy, Scorpius was quite good friends with Albus, so it wasn't likely to be an issue. And if it was an issue, well, then they'd just have to deal with it. I rather liked Teddy's attitude on the subject.

The wedding day finally arrived, and everything went as planned. There was some last minute chaos, but it wouldn't be a wedding without last minute chaos. The bridesmaids all looked lovely in their blue dresses, and Victoire was gorgeous in her simple, form fitting gown. Fleur looked lovely as well; she had obviously gone through great lengths to avoid outshining her daughter.

The men took a much shorter amount of time to get ready—fifteen minutes in total. The women took an hour, but they had a right to take such a long time; weddings were mainly for the women, if it was up to men all marriages would involve a government agent, a piece of paper, and a signature.

As I watched the ceremony, I felt rather odd. I should have been proud to see my grandson marrying this lovely young woman, but instead of feeling pride, I felt distinctly unhappy. All I could think about was how much I wanted his parents, and Ted, to be there. How proud they would have been.

I wanted them there. Badly. And I felt almost traitorous for being there when they weren't able to attend. I supposed that they were there in spirit—we had even set aside three empty chairs in their memory—but that wasn't much of a consolation. It took my best efforts to keep myself from crying.

I heard the distinct sound of sobbing coming from next to, and sure enough, there sat Narcissa, her eyes glued to the ceremony and a little white handkerchief dabbing at them. Perhaps I should have been touched that Narcissa was showing such emotion at my grandson's wedding, but I really just wished that she would shut up and leave me to my thoughts in (relative) silence.

I was pulled out of my reverie by the sounds of hooting and cheering; I was astonished to find that the ceremony was over. I pulled myself out of my seat, and joined the throng of well wishers surrounding the newlyweds. The crowd made way for me as I approached, and I drew them both into tight hugs.

I turned to Teddy.

"Your parents would be so proud of you right now," I told him tearfully.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Your mum would make a dirty joke or two, but there would be some parental pride there."

He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug.

I looked back towards where I had been sitting; Narcissa sat there with Scorpius (who had done an excellent job in the ceremony), both of them looking slightly unsure. I assumed that she had hung back out of discomfort; she really had no wish to push through a reveling mass of Weasleys.

It took around twenty minutes for the well-wishers to dispel, and for the guests to take their seats.

The rest of the day went along typical wedding lines; people danced, tears were shed (mostly by Molly and Fleur), toasts were made, and there was dancing. It was a lovely, normal traditional wedding, and it was all I could have wanted for the wedding of my grandson.

Teddy and Victoire danced with everyone. As the night was winding down, Teddy made his way to my table and quite solemnly requested a dance with me. As we made our way to the dance floor, we passed a gaggle of teenagers; mainly Weasleys. They dispelled as the band struck up the next song.

I turned and glimpsed at them as they made their ways back to the tables. Rose and Scorpius lagged behind the rest of them, laughing at some joke or other. Rose recovered the soonest, grinned at Scorpius, and went off to join her cousins in their scavenging for leftover cake.

He watched her retreating back, and a confused, frustrated sort of expression passed over his face as his eyes followed her. He stood looking confused for a moment or two, and then shook his head slightly, and made his way over to where Narcissa was sitting.

I smiled slightly to myself. If that confused expression meant what I thought it did, we would all be in for a very interesting ride.


	10. Scorpius

**Chapter 10: Scorpius**

The arrival of Scorpius' acceptance letter to Hogwarts was greeted with the normal amount of enthusiasm. It always amused me, the way families acted as though the Hogwarts letter was completely unexpected.

His parents and grandparents and some other facets of his extended family decided to have a dinner party in his honor of his impending Hogwarts career. It was to be held in the dining room of Malfoy Manor.

I wasn't overly keen on attending as some of the people in attendance were members of the old pureblood set—people I had not seen since I was about seventeen, and people I who I had no wish to ever see again.

I ended up attending. Scorpius wanted me there, and, well, it was his night and if he wanted me there that badly then I couldn't let old acquaintances keep me away. Scorpius also wanted Teddy to be there but Teddy was even less comfortable with them than I was.

When I arrived the table was nearly full. Draco and Astoria were there of course, as was Scorpius' aunt Daphne, Lucius, Narcissa, Daniel, Emmeline (Daniel and Emmeline are Scorpius' Greengrass grandparents), and Elizabeth, a cousin of Narcissa's and mine from our mother's Rosier side.

They all turned to stare as I walked in. Lucius scowled slightly, Daniel and Emmeline looked politely disdainful, and Narcissa looked nervous. Draco and Astoria greeted me happily, and Scorpius ran to greet me.

"Aunt Andy! You came!" he said as he ran to hug me.

I smiled down at him and returned the hug.

"Of course I came, dear."

He scanned the area behind me.

"No Teddy?"

"No, he wanted to come but he had a lot of things to take care. However, he told me to tell you that he promises to be at King's Cross to see you off."

Scorpius looked mollified, but still rather disappointed. It had been a lie; Teddy wasn't busy at all, he had merely informed me that he would rather chew off his own arm than attend the dinner. I didn't think that Scorpius, or the rest of the assemblage would appreciate that, so I sugar-coated it. Scorpius couldn't tell, but I'm pretty sure Narcissa could.

"He'll definitely be at King's Cross?" Scorpius pressed. He may have caught on more than I thought.

"Of course he will be, dear. Now will you show me to my seat?"

Teddy would in fact be at King's Cross, though, it was more to see Victoire off than anyone else. Scorpius didn't have to know that either. Although, considering how quickly he caught on to the reason for Teddy's absence, he may have figured that out too.

Scorpius let the subject drop, and led me to my seat between him and Narcissa.

The assemblage eyed me warily. I pretended not to notice.

"So, Andromeda," Elizabeth began awkwardly, "how have you been since I, erm, last spoke to you?"

I had seen her over the years at various Malfoy-involved events, but we hadn't spoken at any of them.

"Oh, I've been lovely, dear. What about you? I heard that you and your spineless family ran away to Paris to avoid the war."

In reply to this, she stammered awkwardly for a moment or two. I took pity on her and liberated her from her awkwardness by asking her to pass the chicken. Once the chicken had been passed, yet another awkward pause ensued. I ignored it. I was doing a lot of ignoring.

Eventually the silence prompted Daphne into speech; people will do anything to end an awkward pause.

"So, Scorpius, are you feeling nervous at all?" she asked.

"Not really. I already know a few people, and I'm sure I can handle the coursework." He chewed contemplatively. "I wish I knew more people in my year, though."

He looked at his father.

"Do you know anything about who else will be in my year, dad?"

"I'm afraid not, Scorpius. Don't worry, you'll make friends, everyone does."

"Yes, dear, don't worry," I chimed in. "It's not very hard to make friends at Hogwarts. You'll find that most first years won't know each other, and they'll all be eager for friends."

He nodded, but I could tell that he wasn't fully listening.

"I know of two kids who are going to be in your year."

His head snapped to attention.

"Who?"

"Well, I'm not sure that your parents and grandparents would approve…"

"Some of Molly Weasley's grandchildren?" Narcissa asked with a rather disdainful look on her face. The other guests looked appropriately disapproving.

I disregarded them.

"Yes, Narcissa. Molly's grandchildren."

"Well, Andromeda," Lucius began in that infuriating drawl he always seemed to speak in, "Scorpius is going to be in Slytherin, so I doubt that he'll have time to associate with those types."

I considered him for a moment.

"Shut up, Lucius."

Narcissa scowled.

The party went on for another hour or so, and we were all gone before ten.

He left for school two days later, and true to his word, Teddy was there to see him—and a multitude of others—off.

Teddy walked in around noon and slumped down on the couch.

"Bloody hell, James is a piece of work."

"What did he do this time?"

"Well I was seeing Victoire off—"

"—You mean that you and Victoire were kissing."

"Erm, yeah, that. Anyway, we were doing _that_, end then James pops up and asks me what I'm doing, the bugger."

"And what did you do?"

"Told him to go away."

"And did he?"

"Yes, but it was still annoying."

"Mmm; James reminds me of his grandfather."

"Was his grandfather that annoying?"

"Worse."

"Wow, that's impressive."

"Indeed. So how were Albus and Rose doing? Were they excited?"

"Rose seemed nervous, but I could tell that she was looking forward to her classes. Al was a bit freaked out, though."

"About what?"

"Well, he was worried about the Sorting."

"Yes, most first years are terrified of that. What was he specifically nervous about?"

"He was afraid of what would happen if he was put into Slytherin. Harry reassured him that he and Ginny would be proud of him no matter what house he was put into, but he didn't look convinced."

"Albus won't be put into Slytherin."

"How do you figure, Gran? I mean, Slytherin is much different now than it was when you were in school."

"I know, and I'm glad that it's changed. However, the fact that it's no longer the pureblood haven it once was… that doesn't change the sort of person that gets sorted into Slytherin, and Albus is just not that sort of person."

"But you were in Slytherin, and you're not 'that sort of person' either."

I laughed.

"Of course I am, dear. How do you think I managed to date your grandfather behind all of their backs for over a year without being that sort of person?"

"I never thought about it like that."

"Most people haven't." I paused. "How was Scorpius?"

"Draco and Astoria were freaking out slightly, but Scorpius seemed pretty cool. A little nervous about typical first year stuff, but good. What house do you reckon he'll be put into?"

"Slytherin."

"Why?"

"Because he is that sort of person; I can sense a certain sort of determination in him, plus he's probably too afraid of what will happen if he's not in Slytherin to allow himself to be placed anywhere else."

Teddy considered that for a moment and then took out a book filled with loads of funny symbols (he was trying to learn Gobbledegook in order to rise in his Department). Apparently our conversation was over.

Albus' fears were baseless, and he ended up in Gryffindor with Rose. Scorpius was sorted into Slytherin, much to his family's relief.

They all seemed to be relatively happy in their respective Houses. I noticed that the Houses were a good deal less segregated than they had been in my day. Nowadays Gryffindors and Slytherins actually associated with each other—on friendly terms, without bloodshed.

When I was at Hogwarts it was considered a triumph in the name of House unity if a Gryffindor and Slytherin were able to pass each other in the corridor without significant bloodshed. In fact, there was a time when the Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff prefects would have to warn their first year Muggle-borns to stay as far as they could away from older Slytherin students.

Once in my sixth year, Marlene was talking to a small group of first years, and they all looked simply terrified as I approached. Not only was I an older Slytherin, but even the first years knew about my "scary" older sister, despite the fact that she had finished Hogwarts. Merlin, was that uncomfortable.

But now, the interactions between the Houses were completely foreign to me. Rose, Scorpius, and Albus became friends. And what's more, none of their fellow students seemed to find this to be overly unusual. Scorpius was friendly from students from all four of the Houses. Rose and Albus had many friends in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and had a few friendly acquaintances in Slytherin.

Rose and Albus' parents, though supporters of House unity, were obviously uncomfortable with the friendship between their children and Scorpius, but decided against saying anything about it to their respective children. Draco was aware of it as well, but he chose to deal with it by simply pretending that it did not exist, and Scorpius knew that better than to discuss it with his father.

From what Teddy told me—I learned most of what I knew about those three from Teddy; of the three of them, the only one I really talked with on a regular basis was Scorpius—it wasn't an especially deep friendship that they had. Albus and Scorpius would occasionally banter about Quidditch or make fun of teachers, and Rose and Scorpius tended to work together during class. They all had their own, closer friends.

I sensed a bit of a change when they entered their fifth year. There were no dramatic, overly noticeable changes; in fact, I may have been the only one to even notice them. I—as a woman who had once engaged in a relationship with someone whom my family most definitely did not approve of—was certainly the only one able to put two and two together.

Occasionally I would attend one of the "family" dinners that Narcissa invited me to. During these dinners I would usually ask Scorpius about Albus and Rose—not because I was curious, but because I enjoyed annoying Lucius. He usually responded in a vague sort of way which tended to turn into a discussion of class work, or Quidditch.

But now, now he answered my questions about Albus in the same manner as usual, but when I asked about Rose, his eyes would dart about and he would stammer slightly. I don't think his parents or grandparents noticed the eye-darting and stammering. Not even Teddy seemed to notice it. I was the only one who noticed, and I kept it to myself.

There was less noticeable awkwardness on Rose's end. At Weasley family gatherings, Teddy and I generally refrained from mentioning the Malfoys unless asked directly about them, but that didn't happen very much.

There were a few times when one of Rose's uncles would tease about having a boyfriend. When this occurred she would turn an intensely deep shade of pink, but everyone assumed that that was because she was embarrassed by the teasing. Sometimes she'd nervously put her elbow in her food while attempting to act casual, and there was some stuttering. However, all of this was attributed to her general shyness and embarrassment at such questions.

Her parents suspected nothing because she didn't make a habit of hiding things from them. The rest of her family suspected nothing for the same reason.

At the beginning of the next summer, this suspicious behavior seemed to have disappeared. Whenever I saw them, the two of them seemed to have prepared polished responses to every possible question they could be asked that might have had anything remotely to do with the other; these answers were so polished that they even felt scripted.

One night a few weeks into that summer, my curiosity got the better of me. Teddy was visiting for a while, so I chose that moment to bring it up.

"Teddy, dear?"

"Yes, Gran?" he asked, looking up from the tea he was making—we habitually had lunch together. Victoire often came around with him, but this time she had stayed home. I was glad she did; if she had been there, I wouldn't have been able to bring this up.

"Have you noticed anything odd about Rose and Scorpius?"

"Not really. I know that they're friendly, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. Why?"

"It's just, I-I'm not sure if it's even anything, but—"

"—But…" Teddy prompted.

"Whenever I see Scorpius, I ask him about Rose and Albus."

"To annoy Lucius, I assume?"

"Of course. So, when I ask him about Albus and Rose, he says nothing about Albus and instead stammers something about studying with Rose for the OWLs. Then he turns bright red and changes the subject."

"That could just be discomfort at the fact that he's discussing them in front of his family."

"That's what I thought at first, but, you know how Rose's uncles occasionally tease her about having a boyfriend?"

"Oh, come on, Gran, they've been doing that ever since she started at Hogwarts."

"Yes, but when they asked her she would always blush, laugh it off, and say that she would alert them when she managed to procure one. Last time they asked her she turned red, didn't laugh, looked mildly upset and changed the subject."

He considered that for a moment.

"Have you considered that she may have looked upset because she's sick of being teased and really wants a boyfriend?"

"Yes, I have considered it."

"And?"

"And…I know how teenagers act when they're trying to conceal something from their families. I was more subtle than they're being, but I recognize the signs, Teddy."

"I still think it's a bit far-fetched, Gran, but I'll keep an eye out if you want me to."

"Yes, I do. Scorpius and Rose spend much more time with you than with me, so really, you're the ideal person to keep an eye out."

He thought about it for a moment or two.

"But, Gran, I still don't understand why you seen so invested in this. Even if they are together, why do you need to know so badly?"

"Because, dear, if they are seeing each other than they won't be able to keep it a secret for long, and when their families find out, there will be hell to pay. You know that."

"Yes—"

"Yes, so and they're going to need someone on their side, won't they?"

"Yes. I suppose."

"So, I'd like to know ahead of time so I can begin to plan what to do in the event of their families finding out. Thank you, dear. Now, how is your job going?"

He scowled at the obvious subject change, but he knew the subject was closed.

I didn't bring it up with him for the rest of the summer, but I knew he was doing as I had asked. As the kids got on the train to Hogwarts for their sixth, Teddy reported back to me.

"Well, Gran, you may have been right."

"About Rose and Scorpius?"

"Yes."

"How did you come to this conclusion, dear?"

"Little things, like you said. I was spending time with Al, and he mentioned that Rose had spent a good chunk of her fifth year studying with Scorpius. And when I talked to Scorpius about Hogwarts and his friends he neglected to mention Rose in the most obvious way possible. After he finished not mentioning her, I asked him about her. He turned bright red, dropped his fork, said that she was good, and started babbling about Quidditch scores. You were right."

"Yes, dear," I said with a grin, "I know."

"So what do we do now?"

"We wait."

"For what?"

"For all hell to break loose."

I realize that it may seem odd how much I care about the relationship between the cousin of my granddaughter-in-law and my grandnephew, especially since I still wasn't entirely sure that there was even a relationship. I'm still not entirely sure of why I cared so much.

I suppose that it all went back to Ted. I had loved him, and was willing to give up my family for him. Rose and Scorpius came from a more coddled, less independent generation of young people, and I knew that they wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to deal with the fallout from all of this. That was why I cared so much: because I would know how to deal with it. However, when the fallout did come, even I wasn't entirely sure of how to deal with it.

When they arrived back for their winter holiday, they both annoyed their respective families by being "out" for long periods of time without much explanation. However, their families blamed that on their ages. Teddy and I knew better.

The ball dropped in the first week of the summer holiday. Draco found a letter.


	11. Confrontations

_Hi guys, sorry about the insane wait; this semester's been crazy._

_Just so you know, there will probably be about two more chapters._

**Chapter Eleven: Confrontations**

I supposed that it was inevitable; that sort of thing couldn't have stayed a secret forever. I was actually fairly surprised by how long they had managed to keep it a secret. Ted and I had lasted a bit longer than the two of them, but then again, the stakes had been higher back then; nowadays neither of them were likely to be disowned or murdered because of their romantic choices.

There was also the fact that Ted and I had been mature enough to know how to deal with it when our families did find out; in those days immaturity could be lethal. Scorpius and Rose, it turns out, were not mature enough to deal with it. Honestly, children these days simply do not appreciate how to keep and defend a good secret.

Where I had remained clear headed enough to walk out of my house with a general plan of how to proceed, Scorpius threw a fit at his father for going through his things—conveniently forgetting that the letter had been left face down on the dining room table. There was also the small fact that Draco hadn't said anything more than "Can you explain this letter to me?" before Scorpius started yelling.

From my understanding of the incident, Draco even attempted to ask Scorpius semi-reasonable questions ("Why is Ron Weasley's daughter writing you letters like this?"), or at least, he asked the questions without raising his voice.

Nevertheless, Scorpius threw an absolute fit, and flooed over to Teddy's to explain what happened. After that Teddy—who hadn't the slightest idea of how to deal with that sort of thing—bought Scorpius to me, thinking that I'd be able to handle it.

Teddy walked in behind a very put-out looking Scorpius. I looked up at the rather stumped look on Teddy's face, and the defiant sort of pout on Scorpius' and I immediately understood what had happened.

"Um, Gran, I think you need to deal with this," said Teddy as he walked through the door with a pouting Scorpius.

I eyed them warily; I really did not want to be in this position—I had expected it, but didn't want it. I'd been through two wars, lost my family, most of my friends, and now I was about to be thrown into the midst of all the drama between the Weasleys and the Malfoys. I sighed inwardly before turning back to them.

"What happened?"

"Tell her, Scorpius," said Teddy.

"Well, erm, Aunt Andy, I-I've been—"

"You've been seeing Rose Weasley."

He gaped at me.

"How…?"

"I once carried on a relationship behind my family's back; I can recognize the signs."

"So, you know."

"Yes."

"How long have you known?"

"Just about one year."

He looked shocked.

"But, why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't want to ruin the fun of keeping a secret. Teddy and I decided to keep it to ourselves until your family found out."

He turned to Teddy.

"You knew too?"

"Of course I did, Scorpius."

"So, what was it that prompted this panic, dear?"

He swallowed, looking scared,

"Dad found a letter. From Rose."

"Ah."

After a short silence, Scorpius attempted to explain his rather hysterical outburst and subsequent exit from his home, but the damage had already been done.

"So, what now Gran?" Teddy asked me once Scorpius had finished speaking.

"I think I should go speak to Draco. We need to know if he's told anyone, and if he has I need to figure out where to go from there."

"No, don't do that. If you do he'll think that it's serious enough for him to worry about, or even worse: grandfather might found out," pleaded Scorpius.

"I'll deal with Lucius if it comes to that. Now in regards to your relationship, are you trying to say that it's not serious enough for your parents to be concerned?"

"Well, yes, it is serious, but—"

"How serious?"

Scorpius spluttered and turned rather red, but didn't answer. That was an obvious indication of the fact that there had been relations of the sexual sort.

"I see. I'm fairly positive that your father picked up on that from the content of the letter he read, so I fail to see the point in attempting to hide it."

Scorpius continued to look extremely unhappy.

"Can't we just hope he forgets about the whole thing?" he finally said with the air of grasping about desperately for solutions.

"Do you really think that that is at all likely?"

"No. I suppose not," he sighed in defeat. Yet, the look on his face suggested that there was more to his unsettledness than a fear of parental (and grandparental) unhappiness.

"What else is bothering you, dear?"

"What's going to happen when Rose's family finds out? I know that you or Mum or Dad is going insist on telling them."

"Well, they won't be happy. Not one little bit. In fact, they may be even less happy about it than Lucius. However, I suspect that their objections will be slightly more legitimate than whatever Lucius will come up with."

"What do you mean?"

I paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain it to him.

"Your grandfather hates the Weasleys for being blood traitors and refusing to stick to the pureblood status quo. The Weasleys hate your family—Lucius, to be specific—because he was nearly responsible for the deaths of at least two members of their family. In addition, Rose's parents had some very serious problems with your father while they were at school together. I don't know the full extent of any of these problems, but I'm guessing that they're fairly serious, and legitimate; the Weasleys tend not to hold pointless grudges."

Scorpius looked rather surprised by that. It was apparent to me that his family had told him very little about the war.

I was just about to contact Draco to alert him of his son's whereabouts—despite Scorpius' protests—when there was a knock on the door. I looked out the window and saw Draco standing there, waiting to be let in. Scorpius, who had followed me to the window, fled upstairs to Teddy's old bedroom upon seeing who was at the door.

After watching him flee, I opened the door with a sigh.

"Hell Draco, your son just ran upstairs," I greeted him cheerfully.

Draco buried his face in his palm.

"Oh hell."

"How did you know he was here?" I asked him as I led him inside.

"Well, I assumed he was with Teddy, so I went to his home, but his wife said that Teddy bought Scorpius here."

"Well, yes, she was correct. Scorpius is here."

For a moment it seemed as if Draco was going to go upstairs after his son, but instead, he paused at the bottom step and turned back to me with a profoundly unsure expression on his face.

"Andromeda?"

"Yes Draco?"

"How on earth should I deal with this?"

"That depends on what aspect of 'this' you are asking me about."

He gaped at me.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, are we speaking in terms of the fact that your son is hiding from you, in terms of Lucius, in terms of telling the Weasleys, or in terms of the fact that the Weasleys rather dislike your family?"

"All of them, I suppose," he responded, looking highly daunted by the task ahead of him. "I wouldn't ask, but, well, you've dealt with this sort of thing before."

"It was quite different, Draco. I suppose it was similar in that my family disapproved of my relationship, but it's completely different in that neither you nor the Weasleys are going to disown your children because of their relationship. Now, in regards to how it should be dealt with; the Weasleys need to be informed. Soon. They won't be happy—you know the reasons for this much better than I do—and it is quite possible that you will have to meet up with them and discuss those reasons. In terms of your son, you have to talk to him and let him know that you and Astoria still love him and respect his romantic decisions. As for your father…I'll deal with him if need be. Now go get Scorpius."

Draco sighed resignedly, and trekked up the stairs. Half an hour later he emerged with a fairly disgruntled looking Scorpius in tow.

"Thank you, Andromeda," he said. He then shot Scorpius a rather meaningful look.

"Yeah, erm, thanks Aunt Andy. And, see you later, Teddy." With that he turned to the fire and returned home.

Draco paused in front of the fire, and then turned back to Teddy and I.

"Do you really think I'll have to discuss those things with the Weasleys?" he asked us.

"Yes," we replied in unison.

He looked distinctly unsettled by that.

"Is it that bad, Draco?" I asked him.

"In some ways, yes," there he paused, his face once again resting in his hand. He looked back to Teddy and I. "Who's going to tell the girl's family?"

"Her name is Rose," I responded, "and we'll take care of it," Teddy nodded in agreement.

Draco thanked us, and promptly left.

Once he was gone, I flopped down onto the couch next to Teddy. We looked at each other in anguish.

"I'll take care of it, Gran," he said reassuringly. He then hugged me, and left.

He's a good boy, that one. Anyone who relieves me of the task of informing any member of the Weasley family that one of their own is in a relationship with a Malfoy is a good boy.

To my great surprise, Molly, Arthur, Ron, and Hermione took the news even worse than Lucius had. According to Teddy, he explained the letter finding incident to Ron and Hermione. Rose had been listening at the door, and had responded rather angrily to the fact that her family was finding out from him. However, Ron, Hermione, and Teddy all agreed that it was preferable to finding out from the Malfoys. At this point Rose burst out into tears and Hermione hurried after her to assure her that she and Ron still loved her very much.

Once they were gone, Ron informed Teddy that he was less than happy about the prospect of his daughter being around "those people" for reasons he would not explain.

Ron and Hermione informed Arthur and Molly of the news the next day. They were even less happy, in fact, that was probably the first time I had ever heard Molly swear quite so badly.

I didn't know how Rose felt about all of this. According to Victoire she had pretty much locked herself in her room, and only emerged to scavenge food from her mother. I think she understood the problems her family had with the Malfoys to a certain extent, but I was also fairly sure that they were keeping a lot of things from her, which probably caused her to believe that the problems came down to nothing more than a problem left over from her parents' school days.

I wanted to offer her—and Scorpius—some sort of reassurance or explanation, but unfortunately, I was just as baffled as they were.

It was very obvious to me that neither the Malfoys nor the Weasleys knew how to deal with the current state of affairs, so they didn't deal with it. They ignored it.

I let this state of denial continue for one week before I knew that I was going to have to step in. It would be unpleasant, I was sure, but I didn't want Rose and Scorpius to feel like they had to lie to their parents more than they already had.

It was with this in mind that I arranged for a meet-up between the Weasleys and the Malfoys. Hopefully at this meeting—or confrontation, perhaps would be a better term for it—the Weasleys would be able to explain exactly why they didn't want Rose around and Malfoys, and the problems could be cleared up. It wouldn't be easy, but if I tried hard enough I knew that I would be able to convince them to come to a truce.

Neither family was overly enthusiastic when I proposed this idea to them, but I managed to guilt them into it by constantly stressing that they would be doing it to assure their children's (or grandchildren's as the case may be) happiness, and lack of resentment.

It was as a result of my urging—or perhaps 'nagging' would be a more appropriate term—that Draco, Astoria, Ron, Hermione, Lucius, Narcissa, Molly, and Arthur agreed to meet in my sitting room. We decided to have it in my home because it was a bit like neutral ground. We decided that it would be best for Rose and Scorpius to be there as well; they needed to have an understanding of the issues at hand. Teddy and I would be there to moderate if things got out of hand.

I considered inviting the Greengrasses and the Grangers—since they weren't overly pleased by their grandchildren's romantic decisions either—but I decided that having anyone else present would be simply too much.

They had all grudgingly agreed on the time and place—through Teddy and I, of course—and it was an exceptionally awkward assemblage that filled my sitting room that Saturday afternoon.

The two families stood rather hostilely on opposite ends of the room, eyeing each other warily. Rose and Scorpius looked rather as though they would have liked for the floor to swallow them whole.

"So, why don't we all take a seat?" I suggested after a moment or so of silence.

None of them moved. I sighed; apparently this was going to be very much more work than I had originally anticipated.

"Alright," I began, "Teddy, you sit there," I said, directing him towards the center of the sofa sitting against the wall. "Rose, Scorpius, sit on either side of him." After that sat where they were told, I directed Ron, Hermione, Draco, and Astoria to sit next to their respective children (I had expanded the couch for the purpose of this gathering). I then directed Molly, Arthur, Lucius and Narcissa to the smaller sofas on either side of the couch. Once I had them all seated, I pulled up a dining room chair, placed it directly in front of the couch, and sat down.

Once seated, I cleared my throat meaningfully. They were all too busy avoiding each other's eyes to notice. Teddy raised his eyebrows at me, I shrugged back at him; I was willing to wait. Minutes passed, and the silence continued. Finally, I lost my patience.

"Well, since none of you seem willing to say anything, I will. You all know why you're here. We need to discuss whatever issues you lot have with each other so your respective children and grandchildren don't end up hating you for keeping them apart. Is this understood?" They all nodded. "Good. Now, since the lot of you have shown yourselves to be incapable of handling this on your own, I've decided to handle it for you. Now, somebody start us off."

None of them did, though. It was starting to get ridiculous; was I going to have to walk them through the entire thing?-it seemed as if it was going to end up that way.

"Ron, start us off," I directed him.

He seemed mildly surprised by my sudden order, but spoke up as directed.

"Our—mine and Hermione's—aversion to this relationship has nothing to do with Scorpius; we have nothing against him. It's them we don't want or daughter around," he said gesturing towards Lucius and Narcissa. "We're not overly thrilled by the possibility of her being around Draco either."

"Why?"

"Ask them," he said gesturing once more at the Malfoys, "they know why."

We all turned towards Lucius and Narcissa. Lucius was pretending quite stubbornly that he didn't know what they were talking about. Narcissa glared at Ron.

"Well?" I prompted them, but they remained stubbornly silent. "Do you know why Ron doesn't want his daughter anywhere near you?"

After a long pause, Narcissa finally responded. "Yes, yes we are quite sure that we are aware of his reasons."

"Would you mind sharing them with us?" I prompted.

She looked highly unhappy about being the one who had to speak first, but she cooperated, sort of.

She turned to Ron before speaking and fixed him with a rather icy expression.

"What happened was…regrettable," she said to him, the tome of her voice matching the expression on her face, "but there was really nothing we could have done to avert it."

"Nothing you could have done," he repeated with a sneer, "that's complete and utter bollocks, and I'm fairly certain that you're aware of that."

At this, Narcissa's face colored ever so slightly.

"Well what do you suggest that I should have done? I was not about to risk my son's life just—"

"—Just to potentially preserve the lives of six people who deserved to live far more than you your husband and your son, yeah, I can see how that wouldn't make any sense to a person like you," Ron cut her off.

Narcissa opened her mouth to fire an angry retort back at him, but I cut her off before she could begin.

Narcissa, what is Ron referring to?"

She blanched.

"Well, he's, erm…"

"Narcissa, I don't have time for this. Cut the rubbish and tell me what's going on."

She gulped; obviously I intimidated her a great deal more than Ron. I didn't drop my stare until she began the explanation.

"Well, Andromeda, you know that during the war the Dark Lord and the rest of them took up residence in our home?" I nodded affirmatively. "Well, erm Bella was there too."

"Yes, Narcissa, I'm sure that we're all well aware of that. Get to the point."

"Well, everyone wasn't there all the time, you see. They were all off on assignments, and the Dark Lord was abroad a lot on some sort of mission nobody knew about, but Bella tended to stay around with us; the Dark Lord didn't seem to have given her very much to do."

"For a good reason too; from what I understand, she tended to screw up a good deal more than was good for her."

"Would you stop interrupting me?" she snapped.

"Fine. Continue."

She shot me another nasty look and then continued.

"Well, since she didn't have much to do, Bella was with us most of the time—especially after the Ministry fell. So, she was there—"

"That has already been established. Get on with it."

"Right. Well, the Dark Lord told us to keep any prisoners we may catch in our cellar, so, around March some Snatchers came upon them," she said, gesturing at Ron and Hermione, "Potter, and a few others. Greyback had happened to be with those Snatchers on that day, and he recognized them, so he followed orders and had the lot of them, bought to our Manor."

At that point I had a very vague idea of where Narcissa's long-winded explanation may have been leading.

"When they arrived at our home, Bella noticed that they had had this sword with them. Bella was very familiar with the sword, and seemed almost frightened by the fact that they had it with them; apparently it put us in danger, or something of the sort, so…"

There, she tapered off once more. Draco looked rather terrified and was staring at his feet, and Lucius was sneering off into thin air; what I had long previously identified as his default expression. Ron was glaring rather murderously at Narcissa, who looked as though she was trying to keep his thoughts together, and Hermione was gripping the arm of the couch so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. Molly and Arthur looked furious, and Rose and Scorpius looked utterly baffled.

Narcissa looked at me agitatedly.

"Do we have to discuss this now?"

"Yes. That's sort of why we're all here, Narcissa."

"Fine," she grudgingly conceded. "Well, they had this sword with them that frightened Bella, so she wanted to know where they got it from. So she, erm, she interrogated Granger and had Potter and Weasley put in the basement." Narcissa had said that last sentence so quickly that it was difficult to make out what she had said.

"'Interrogated'?" I asked.

"Yes," she muttered, now carefully avoiding my eyes.

"In her usual sort of way?"

"Yes."

"In your home?"

"Yes." She was becoming more and more uncomfortable with each passing affirmation.

"And you, Lucius, and Draco just let that happen?"

"Yes."

After this last affirmation, a long, uncomfortable, mildly shocked silence ensued. I chose to be the one to break it.

"I see," I began slowly. "Well, no wonder they don't want their daughter anywhere around you. I certainly wouldn't."

"You don't understand," she said, glaring at me. "What happened was certainly regrettable, but we had no choice."

"No choice?" spat Ron. "I think you, and you husband, and your son and your whole rotten family had choice."

"Well you don't know what you're talking about," she hissed back at him. I could tell that she was doing her best to channel Bellatrix—that's what she always did when threatened. Unfortunately for her, she was terrible at it.

"Well, Narcissa, Ron is right, you did have a choice. You had a choice not to let the Death Eaters into your home, for one," I said.

"No I didn't, Andromeda. There was no choice."

"There is always a choice, Narcissa. For example, you could have chosen to go into hiding with Draco after Dumbledore was killed. There were a million things you could have done differently."

"No I couldn't have. Lucius was in jail, and I had no idea of what to do, and Bella said—"

"—'And Bella said.' That's what it comes down to, doesn't it? You just can't think for yourself, can you? You always need to have someone around to tell you what to do. First it was Lucius, and then he lost his nerve, so it was Bella, and then she died so it's me. Well, I am going to tell you what to do; you need to grow up and take responsibility for what occurred in your home in your presence."

I let that sink in for a moment before continuing. "Now, you need to acknowledge that what happened was wrong, you need to acknowledge that it was partially your fault, and you need to apologize to them."

She stared at me, looking almost lost.

"But how did I have a choice, Andromeda?" she asked me quietly, reverting back to the earlier discussion. "What was there for me to choose from?"

"You could have told Bella to stop, you could have stopped Bella, you could have convinced her to consider some alternate method of interrogation. There were so many things you could have done."

"Oh be realistic Andromeda. I couldn't have done any of those things, and if I had she probably would have killed Draco, or the Dark Lord would have found out and killed us all."

"Oh don't be ridiculous, she was never going to kill your son. Second of all, you could have escaped before the Dark Lord arrived, and third of all, I suppose it never occurred to you that the lives of innocent people might be a little bit more important than the preservation of your security level, did it?"

"What do you mean she wouldn't have killed Draco? She killed your daughter, didn't she?" Narcissa responded, quite masterfully (or so she though) avoiding my other questions.

"First of all my daughter's death is completely irrelevant to this discussion and you know it. Second of all, you're ignoring the rest of what I said to you."

"I just wanted to keep Draco safe, Andy. You know that his safety was all I cared about by that point. You know that. I didn't like letting those horrible things go on in my home, you know that too. But if I had tried to put a stop to them, it would have endangered Draco. I know that there were things I could have done differently, but I was so preoccupied with Draco's safety that none of those things seemed important enough to put him in danger for. In retrospect I now see where I could have acted differently, but back then…" she tapered off.

"Good. Now tell them that," I said, gesturing at Ron and Hermione, "and explain to them why they should be at all comfortable letting their daughter into your general vicinity."

Narcissa looked over at Ron and Hermione. Ron was glaring at her expectantly, and Hermione continued to stare into her lap. Narcissa opened her mouth unsurely.

"What happened to you in my home was very unfortunate. I wasn't setting out to hurt anyone, really. I was just trying to do what was best for my family. I didn't like the things that were done, and they were—"

"—Regrettable, we heard," interrupted Ron rather sarcastically.

Narcissa flushed angrily, but didn't remark upon it.

"Yes, it was. What happened was not a result of personal malice; it was just an unfortunate occurrence that nobody quite knew how to handle."

Ron and I looked at each other. He did not look at all satisfied; I hoped he knew that that was the closest thing to an apology that he could hope to get out of her.

"What about him?" Ron asked, gesturing towards Lucius.

"We'll deal with him later," I told him. "Draco, do you have anything to say about this?"

"Yes, I do." Draco, unlike is mother, looked directly at Ron and Hermione while speaking to them. "I apologize for what my Aunt Bellatrix did to you on that day. It was horrible, and I regret that I was too cowardly to do anything about it."

Ron considered him for a long moment, looking almost impressed, and then gave a brief nod.

"Good, I'm glad that we have at least semi-dealt with that issue. Hermione, was it explained to your satisfaction?"

"Erm, yes, I suppose," she responded in a rather high-pitched sort of voice; a clear indication of the fact that she had no desire to spend any more time in the discussion of this particular matter.

"Right then, moving on. Who's next?"

"I am," said Arthur. "There is the small matter of Lucius attempting to sabotage my reputation at the Ministry and nearly killing my daughter in the process."

We all turned to stare at Lucius, expecting an explanation or defense of some sort, but he merely sneered off into the distance.

"Lucius, would you like to address what Arthur just said?" I asked him, feeling rather as though I was coaxing a toddler to come in out of the rain.

"No, Andromeda. I wouldn't. This whole meeting is a waste of my time. I'm not just going to sit here and listen to filth like this hurl accusations at my family. What we did back in those days was to protect ourselves, and neither I, nor my wife, nor my son should need to justify acts of self-protection in order to make them happy with this idiotic relationship."

Arthur and Molly looked rather as though they were ready to throw a punch. Ron looked simply murderous, Rose looked as though she wanted to cry, and the rest of the Malfoys looked absolutely humiliated.

"So, you don't care about your grandson's happiness?"

"Oh I care about my grandson. But I fail to see what his happiness has to do with my wife, son and I having to field accusations from these people on the account of this girl," he said, sneering at Rose.

At this, Ron leapt to his feet, wand pointed at Lucius. I stood up, pushed Ron back to his seat, and turned to Lucius.

"Well, Lucius, it should be clear. They hate you and do not want Rose—that's her name; Rose—within a thousand feet of you, or your wife. And frankly after this little outburst of yours I thoroughly agree with them."

"Well the good, at least we can all agree on something. Quite frankly, Andromeda, I have no desire to witness the continuation of this ridiculous relationship and I fail to see how it would permanently affect my grandson's relations with me if it doesn't."

"Of course you don't, Lucius. I forgot that I was dealing with you and not a mature adult; I'll try to remember that in the future," I sneered. I saw him open his mouth to counter my remark, so I spoke up again before he had the chance.

"No, Lucius, don't try to defend yourself. Do you have any idea of what I'm trying to do here? Do you? I'm trying to keep your family from falling apart. I'm trying to keep your grandson from joining the ranks of the people who hate you because you fucked up their lives; I'm doing this for you."

"Scorpius doesn't like you, and he only deals with you because he's obligated to. He's this close," I demonstrated the closeness with my fingers, "to hating you for fucking up his relationship with his girlfriend. Rose's entire family hates you because of the sheer amount of shit you've pulled with them over the years, and I hate your for a plethora of reasons that aren't entirely relevant at the moment. In fact, the only person in this room who doesn't hate you or isn't close to hating you is your wife and possibly your son, so I would advise you to quit while you're ahead."

He just stared at me, his mouth opened slightly. Nobody spoke; nobody could think of anything to say. I ignored them all and stared right back at Lucius. After a long pause he hitched his signature sneer back onto his face, stood up, walked out the door, and promptly disapparated.

A long silence dragged on in the wake of his departure. The Weasleys looked livid, and the Malfoys looked humiliated.

"Well," I said in a tone of forced enthusiasm as I returned to my seat, "now that he's gone perhaps we can make some real progress. So, we were discussing Lucius' attempt at ruining your reputation, right Arthur?"

He looked surprised by the sudden return to the original discussion, but got over his surprise fairly quickly.

"Yes, but I wasn't really expecting him to give me a worthwhile explanation, I was just curious as to how he would respond."

"Right, well, now you know. Why don't we just leave all of the Lucius related incidents out of our discussion for the time being. Now, who's next?"

Ron opened his mouth to air another grievance, but to my slight surprise Draco cut him off.

"You're about to mention the poisoning incident in sixth year, aren't you?"

Ron looked mildly surprised, but nodded.

"That was just a desperate measure I used to attempt to succeed in my assignment so He wouldn't kill my parents. I never wanted anyone dead, neither intentionally nor accidentally." He sighed, running a hand over his face.

"Listen, Weasley, I understand why your family is worried by this, and I don't want my son to resent me; I don't want to be my father…" he tapered off. We all knew, in a sense, what he was trying to say.

Ron didn't seem entirely satisfied with Draco's unspoken message, but he accepted it in a grudging sort of way.

"What do you think?" he asked Hermione.

"I'm fine with it," she muttered. I was under the distinct impression that she was still very upset at having to listen to a discussion of what Bellatrix had done to her all those years ago. I could tell that she wasn't fine with it, but I also knew that she wasn't the sort to forbid her daughter from being in a relationship.

The other Weasleys looked rather skeptical of what Draco had said—well, of what he had almost said—but they too seemed as if they were willing to accept it.

"Narcissa would you like to add anything to what your son just said?" I asked her.

"He said it very well. I was the same way; I just wanted to keep my family safe. That was all I set out to do. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I didn't go about it in the most admirable of ways, but I did the best I could. I'll admit that I did put my son's life above the lives of others, and I don't think it's fair for that to be held against me because I did what any mother would have done in that situation."

"Oh give me a break," Molly sneered; I was surprised that it had taken her this long to jump in, "that was obviously directed at me for killing that foul sister of yours. Somehow, I think that was a bit more excusable than the amount of damage your family nearly did to mine."

"I am trying to be cooperative for the sake of the children," Narcissa snarled back, her formerly peaceable tone all but forgotten. "Aren't they what we're here for?-Or was this whole meeting just an excuse for your family to hurl insults at mine?"

Molly looked as though she was preparing herself for some sort of monumental battle. It was, once again, time for me to step in.

"Molly! Narcissa! That's quite enough out of both of you."

They both glared at me, but returned to their seats.

"Ron, Hermione, are you at all satisfied with what Draco and Narcissa have said?"

Ron looked questioningly at Hermione who gave a very tiny nod.

"Yes, we are. I'm still not entirely reassured, but I'll accept it for now."

"Good. I think we've probably exhausted all facets of conversation for now, so you are all free to go."

Frankly I was just as eager for them to leave as they were to go; I was quite worn out by it all.

Once they were all gone, I turned to Teddy.

"So, how do you think it went?"

"Much better than expected, actually."

"Me too; in fact, I'm quite proud of Draco."

"Yeah, he was great," Teddy agreed. "What about Lucius?"

"He acted just as I expected him to, really. However, I'd say that generally, our little gathering was quite successful."

A couple of days later Narcissa paid me a visit. She told me that one day after the gathering, Lucius had had a long talk with Scorpius and had apparently told him that he was perfectly fine with the relationship. Perhaps Lucius had listened to me after all.


	12. Rose

_Well, we have one more chapter left. Wow. Oh, and for those of you who haven't spent hours obsessing over the Black Family Tree, Evan Rosier is Andromeda's and Narcissa's cousin on their mother's side._

**Chapter Twelve: Rose**

Realistically, though, neither Ron nor Lucius were at all okay with it. Lucius was much too set in his ways to be alright with his grandson's relationship with a Weasley, and Ron was much too protective of his daughter to ever be fine with her being anywhere near the Malfoys. Yet, after the "discussion" in my living room, they both became quite skilled at pretending to be fine with it.

Frankly, I didn't care how any of them truly felt about it so long as Rose and Scorpius were happy. I knew that Lucius had only pretended to be fine with it so that Scorpius wouldn't hate him, and I know that Ron's behavior had nothing to do with liking Scorpius—he loved Rose far too much to make her unhappy about her boyfriend.

I suspected that Hermione wasn't overly thrilled by it all, but she never would have said anything to Rose about it unless asked. Hermione believed in letting her daughter form her own thoughts and opinions; a parenting philosophy that I greatly respected.

Molly and Arthur, well, they were still highly displeased; I suspected that nothing I could do or say would diminish the animosity which had been built up over the previous six or so decades. They made an effort to get to know Scorpius, but I knew they were having trouble separating him from his family.

Nevertheless, time went on, and Rose and Scorpius happily continued on with their relationship. Their families learned to deal with it; in fact, I was fairly sure that the Weasleys had grown rather grudgingly fond of Scorpius as the years progressed; he did have Teddy and Victoire's endorsements (not to mention mine), after all.

I don't know how the Malfoys felt about Rose; the whole torturing incident made her rather uncomfortable around them. Astoria once mentioned to me that she thought that Rose was a "lovely girl," Draco merely smiled rather agreeably as she told me this. That's all I really got from the two of them about that particular subject.

Things continued to progress, until one day in their early twenties, Rose and Scorpius announced their engagement. This was met with a decidedly mixed response.

The grandparents involved put on a highly transparent show of acceptance and pleasure at the idea. I had no doubt that they were already plotting various ways to stake their claims on the guest list and the possible children that would be produced by the union.

Ron, Hermione, Draco, and Astoria put on a much better show of acceptance than their parents (or in-laws as the case may be) had, but I could tell that they too were already plotting against each other in terms of the grandchildren.

Nobody openly discussed this particular issue until Molly bought it up while I was paying her a visit.

"They had better not be difficult about the children," Molly said rather suddenly as she peeled a potato. I had the distinct impression that she had been waiting to bring this up with me for quite a time.

"It may be a good idea to allow Ron, Hermione, Draco, and Astoria to figure out how to deal with the grandchildren issue before you start plotting face-offs with Narcissa over it."

"I'm not plotting anything Andromeda, I'm just thinking ahead."

"Do you really have such little faith in my intelligence, Molly? I know that you're just looking for an excuse to have a fight with her."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said in an overly casual tone as she turned her back on me and returned to the potatoes.

Apparently our conversation was over.

Lucius responded in the same general manner as Molly had, except he made no attempt to be at all casual or sly about it.

"So, Scorpius is engaged to that Weasley girl. I suppose you're the one I can thank for this," Lucius sneered at me over tea and biscuits.

"If you mean that I'm the person you should thank for assisting your grandson in securing the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, then, yes, I suppose you should be thanking me, and Teddy too, we can't forget Teddy."

Narcissa said nothing and took a long sip of tea.

"So, this Rose, you say that she's a nice girl?" she asked me rather sharply after finishing her—extraordinarily long—sip of tea.

"She's a lovely girl; very well spoken and intelligent. Scorpius is lucky to have her."

"I'd say that she's lucky to have Scorpius," Narcissa snapped.

I raised my eyebrows and said nothing. A lengthy silence ensued before Lucius spoke up again.

"I dread to think of what my mother would say about all of this."

"Your mother was a nasty bitch who dealt with the reality of her sad, loveless existence by making everyone around her miserable. She was nearly as bad as Rabastan's mum."

"Fine. I dread to think of what your parents would think."

"They'd be horrified. Obviously. People have been thrown out of our family for marrying a Weasley."

Narcissa looked mildly surprised by this.

"Who has been thrown out of our family for marrying a Weasley?"

"Cedrella Black."

"Who?" she responded with a blank stare.

"Cedrella Black was thrown out in the 1930's after she married Septimus Weasley."

"I've never heard of her in my life."

"Well, our family didn't exactly make a point of educating us about people who had been disowned over the years."

"Well, how did you find out then?"

"Uncle Alphard told me about her. She was our grandfather's cousin, I think. But she's not the point of this. The point is that, yes, our parents would have been disgusted, but that era, and their way of thinking is considered to be very archaic and old-fashioned nowadays, so I suggest that the two of you learn to deal with it and get over the girl's surname."

Neither of them said anything.

The next stage of Weasley/Malfoy drama asserted itself a couple of weeks after my discussion with Lucius and Narcissa. I had found myself, once again, sitting in Molly Weasley's kitchen, and I was getting ready to leave when the subject of the guest list came up.

"I have to go spar with the Malfoys over their guest list," I sighed as I stood up to leave.

"I won't have any of their Death Eater sympathizing French relatives at my granddaughter's wedding," Molly snarled dangerously.

"Don't worry, Molly, I'll see to it that they're not invited."

"Yes, see to it that you do," said Molly rather unkindly.

"No. I don't want them there," said Scorpius about an hour after I had left the Burrow.

"We have to invite them Scorpius, it's polite."

"I don't care. I don't want them at my wedding."

"But they're your family."

"They're a load of cowardly purebloods that ran away to France at the first signs of trouble," he snorted. Lucius looked gravely insulted.

"You do realize that you just insulted my cousins, your grandmother's aunt, and all of their families, don't you?"

"Yeah. I just insulted a couple of Rosiers, one or two obscure Malfoys, and that Lestrange woman. Big deal."

"I hate that she's still alive," I interjected. It was true; the fact that Bella's mother-in-law was still alive never failed to irritate me.

Lucius ignored me and kept his eyes on his grandson.

"Yes you did insult them. You just insulted your own family."

"They're not my family; they're your family. I barely even know them. If they come they'll be nasty to Rose, and I really don't feel like inviting a load of Voldemort sympathizers to a wedding that Harry Potter will be attending."

"Oh, so you're embarrassed of us," accused Lucius.

"Dad, talk to him," Scorpius begged.

"Erm, Dad, perhaps it wouldn't be such a good idea to invite them all. After all, they would be rather nasty about the bride, and her family is paying for the wedding, after all," said Draco in reasonable sort of voice (the Weasleys had had offered to finance the wedding; they claimed that it was because it was traditional for the bride's family to pay, but we all knew that they knew that their offer would give them the upper hand in certain matters, like the guest list, for example).

"Which is ironic if you take into account that we have more money," Lucius sneered. Narcissa nodded in agreement.

"Don't insult my fiancés grandparents. It sets a bad precedent."

"Oh, so now they're you fiancé's grandparents. Are you going to make a habit of kissing up to the Weasleys?"

Scorpius flushed unpleasantly.

"I thoroughly intend to get along well with my future in-laws, grandfather. I'm not going to invite the mother of the man who is said to have been one of the Death Eaters who killed Mrs. Weasley's brothers to my wedding," said Scorpius in reference to Evan Rosier's suspected role in the deaths of Gideon and Fabian, "and I'm not going to invite the mother-in-law of the woman who tortured my future mother-in-law to my wedding."

Judging by the expressions on Draco's, Narcissa's, and Lucius' faces, Scorpius had hit below the belt with that last remark. I was under the impression that the Malfoys had a sort of unspoken agreement not to mention what had happened to Hermione during the war; Scorpius had obviously broken the rule.

"I am not happy about this Scorpius," Lucius said, rather nastily, to Scorpius.

"Well you don't have to be happy about it; it's not your wedding. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work," and with that, Scorpius left.

Lucius shot me a positively venomous glare, and stormed out of the room. I chuckled, and promptly left.

Molly was quite pleased when I informed her that none of the French "relatives" had made it onto the guest list.

The rest of the planning went relatively well; the grandparents managed to avoid each other and further conflicts so I didn't have to deal with that, and the parents no longer seemed to dislike each other _that_ much. They weren't destined to become bosom buddies any time soon, but they could be in the same room without hurling insults at each other.

The ceremony went surprisingly smoothly. I could tell that Ron had a bit of trouble with the part in which he had to "give" Rose away (so to speak), and Scorpius' side of the family looked mildly uncomfortable, and the Weasley side occasionally forgot not to sneer at the groom's side. However, the ceremony and the reception passed without anyone being hexed or punched out over the wedding cake, so in my book it was a monumental success.

As the reception was winding down, I found my way to Lucius and Narcissa's table; the two of them looked distinctly awkward amongst the multitude of Weasleys.

I smiled at the two of them and raised my wine glass to toast them.

"Toujours pur," I said.


	13. Epilogue

_Well, here ends the fic. This thing basically spanned the entirety of my freshman year (minus two-ish months). Wow. Thank you all SO MUCH for reading and reviewing and faving; it made my day to open my email and see an review/fave alert. _

_Even though this particular story is over, it is not the end. I have an outtake of this chapter, an Andromeda centric oneshot, and a short multi-chapter Andy fic bopping around my hard-drive, so stick around! _

_Oh, and yes, Teddy did name his children Dora and Regulus. What can I say?-he does look up to Harry after all. It only stands to reason that he would imitate Harry's naming practices_

**Epilogue**

"So what did the Healer say" Teddy asked me anxiously as I entered the house.

"What on earth are you doing here? Aren't Dora and Reg getting home today? Shouldn't you be at King's Cross with Vicky?"

"The Hogwarts Express isn't due for at least another two hours, and you're avoiding my question, Gran."

I sighed reluctantly.

"The Healer said that I have about one year left; not that I couldn't have figured that out myself."

"_What?_"

"Lower your voice dear," I told him as I headed towards the kitchen to put on a kettle of tea.

"A year left to _what_, Gran?"

I could tell by the tone of his voice that he already knew the answer. I stared him down for a minute, waiting for him to admit that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

"You never told me it was fatal," he said in a low angry voice, "I know that you've had this illness for quite a number of years, but you never told me that it was fatal. Did the Healers just fail to mention it when you were diagnosed?"

"Oh no, of course not dear, they told me it could be fatal if left untreated."

"And what?-They just let you skip on home?"

"Well they can't force treatment upon an unwilling patient if that patient is in their right mind at the time if diagnosis. It's all in St. Mungo's guide to Healer ethics."

"Let me get this straight; you _knew _that this thing would be fatal if you left it untreated, and you decided not to treat it. Am I correct?"

"Yes dear, that is perfectly correct," I told him as I handed him a cup of tea.

"Why the _hell_ would you leave something like that untreated?" he asked me, completely ignoring the cup of tea I was holding out to him.

I merely stared at him. He was a smart boy. He would understand, eventually.

"It was on purpose," he said staring at me blankly. "You left it untreated on purpose."

"Yes."

"But…why? Are you unhappy? What—? I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand, Teddy. I knew, when I was diagnosed, that I would be ready to go by the time it became serious."

He continued to stare at me uncomprehendingly. I sighed once more and sat him down at the kitchen table.

"I'm tired, Teddy. I'm tired. I lived through more in the first twenty five years of my life than most do in their entire lifetime. All of my closest friends are dead. Most of my family is dead; my daughter, my husband, Sirius, Bella; they're all gone. I only-I only kept going when the war was over because I still had responsibilities to fulfill in this world. I had an orphaned three-month-old to raise, and a sister to reclaim…" here I tapered off, trying to reclaim my thoughts. "And I did all of that. I raised you into a happy well-adjusted adult, I got my sister back…but now it's done, you're done. I'm done, and soon I'll be gone."

"But Gran—"

"There are no 'buts' Teddy. I'm done, I'm tired. I want to see my husband again. I want to see my little girl again. I want to see my cousins and my old friends again. I've done all I can, and now I'm ready for it to be over."

Teddy let me finish my explanation, and continued to stare at me for a full minute. He then stood up rather abruptly and stormed out of the house. He hadn't even touched his tea.

I sighed to myself; I had known that he would be upset by my choices, but he'd come around eventually.

And he did. While he certainly wasn't happy with my choices (he informed me of this in a voice that had the most adorable authoritative inflection) but he understood my motivations.

I spent most of the remainder of that year spending time with Narcissa, my great-grandchildren, and mediating the inevitable disputes that were constantly cropping up between Narcissa and Molly over the great-grand children. When I wasn't with family or friends, I was alone, looking over photos from the old days; from the past that no longer felt so completely out of reach.

There was Marlene and I making ridiculous faces at the camera while Alice struck a silly pose in the background. There was Dora, Ted, and I on holiday in France, and there were all of us Black children standing together for one of Aunt Walburga's ridiculous family portraits. Further down the page Dora and Ted stood proudly in Frank and Alice's wedding, and Sirius had Remus forever trapped in a headlock.

I snapped the album shut, and wiped a small tear from the corner of my eye.

"Not much longer," I whispered to myself as I climbed into bed. "Not much longer."

* * *

It was early in the morning in late November, if Andromeda recalled correctly. She had been rather suddenly awakened by what she could have sworn was somebody saying her name, or perhaps it had been a gentle tug on her arm that had dragged her out of her slumber. She sat up in bed, blinked, and scanned the seemingly empty room. Just as she had convinced herself that she had neither heard nor seen nor felt anything, she heard it again.

"Andy," she looked in the direction the voice was coming from, and was startled to see Ted standing there clear as day and looking not a day past twenty five years of age.

"Ted?" Andromeda asked, knowing that it was impossible for this man who she had not seen in over thirty five years to be standing in front of her.

He walked over to the bed and tenderly pushed a strand of her hair off of her face.

"Yes, love. It's me. I'm really here."

She felt his fingers threading through hers, and registered—rather dreamily—that she hadn't felt anything half so wonderful as that for longer than she could remember.

"C'mon love. It's time to go. Everybody's looking forward to seeing you."

Without giving Andromeda time to respond or wrap her mind around anything he had just said, Ted gently pulled her out of the bed and into his arms.

He kissed her then. She would never be able to aptly describe just how wonderful that kiss was; words wouldn't do it justice. When the kiss broke, all she was really concerned with was when the next one would begin, but as she leaned in for it, something on the bed caught her eye.

She turned towards the bed and was shocked to see herself lying there, looking as though she was merely in a deep sleep. She hardly thought that she looked—

There her thoughts tapered off as the reality of the moment began to dawn on her.

She turned to Ted who had been watching her face carefully.

"Is this a dream?"

"No, Andy. This is as real as that body lying there on the bed."

She blinked in comprehension.

"I'm dead?" she whispered.

"Yes."

Andromeda was rather shocked; she had known that death was coming, but she hadn't expected it to arrive so quickly, and painlessly.

She turned back to him, only to see that they were no longer standing in the bedroom. They were instead standing in a lovely, grassy meadow surrounded by trees with a lovely little cottage sitting a little ways away.

"She's here!" an excited voice cried out across the distance. Ted grinned knowingly, took his wife by the arm and led her towards the cottage.

They had barely taken three steps before a half-sobbing Dora threw herself into her mother's arms; the impact was so great that Andromeda nearly lost her balance.

As she held her daughter tightly against her chest, she looked back over to the cottage, and could distinctly make out more and more people flooding out of its door.

Sirius was striding towards her with a wide smile on his youthful, handsome face. Regulus lingered a little ways behind him, and even farther back stood Marlene, Gideon, Fabian, Frank, Alice, Remus, James, and Lily; all waving to her joyfully.

She paused for a moment as she glanced towards the trees, positive that she had seen Bella lurking amongst them (but she was gone before Andromeda could take a closer look), and then turned back to her friends and returned their greetings.

"Come on Andy," Sirius told urged her impatiently as he pulled her into a tight embrace, "Lily's about to put dinner on the table."

She grinned at him and followed her two cousins across the meadow with her husband in one arm and her daughter in the other towards the cottage to what she knew was going to be a series of joyful reunions.

* * *

In his home nestled in the heart of Cornwall, Teddy Remus Lupin sat up in bed rather rapidly as he awoke from a very strange dream. His sudden movement managed to wake up his wife as well.

"Teddy, what's wrong?" Victoire murmured sleepily.

"Sorry love, just had an odd dream. Something involving Gran, and a cottage in a meadow…" he tapered off, the details of the (astonishingly vivid) dream flying away from him in the way that the details of dreams had an annoying tendency to do.

He glanced back over at Victoire; she had fallen back to sleep.

Shaking his head and muttering to himself, he threw an arm over Victoire and promptly rejoined her in her slumber.

The next morning, he wasn't surprised when his grandmother wouldn't wake up.


End file.
